when ice flowers bloom
by tendrils of a dream
Summary: It's true Lilia brought in Zoya Romanova because she genuinely thinks that she's the only composer gifted (broken) enough to capture Yuri Plisetsky's essence and turn it into song. But mostly, she just wants them to fall in love. (It's been too long since she's seen either of them happy.)
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: Obviously, anything you recognize belongs solely to the creators of the anime (if it didn't, Yuuri and Viktor would've been married by now :)) ); I claim only the storyline and a bunch of OCs who I sincerely hope you'll grow to love.**

* * *

 _ **prologue**_

 _ **song of my youth, love of my heart**_

"Hi! My name is Zoya, I'm five, and I'd love for us to be friends!"

Zoya says all this with twinkling eyes and a smile so big as to encompass the universe, her hand extended towards an older girl in the polite way her Mama taught her. Her companion of choice –twelve, if she had to guess, but numbers don't hold much meaning for her yet- shakes her head, a confused half-smile springing on her face; but she shakes Zoya's hand all the same, and Zoya doesn't feel quite so alone.

Actually, this one of Zoya's favorite parts in an international competition – meeting a stream of possible friends, young musicians all, and fumbling with introductions in languages so strange they make her head spin. But the cultural barriers make everything so much more special, in Zoya's eyes: easy smiles that are suddenly laden with meaning, shrugs that say "I don't understand" and dimples that answer "I know, it doesn't matter, we can still be friends".

So, with an air of experience, Zoya points towards herself and stretches her name into two clear syllables, then gestures towards the girl and presents the upside of her palms in question. The girl laughs brightly, chocolate curls bouncing with excitement, and says "Giulia" just as an official calls for a signorina Crivello.

Giulia startles and bites her lip, worry creeping slowly onto her face like a gathering of storm clouds. Zoya sees her hands tremble (just a little, but enough to concern, because pianists need steady hands just as surely as nights need stars) and so she covers them with hers, a blanket of empathetic feelings and good wishes.

"In bocca al lupo*!" Zoya's lips twist awkwardly around the letters, but Giulia seems to understand because she throws her arms around Zoya and whispers "Grazie!*" into her soft curls before she hurries off to the stage.

Zoya feels the first tendrils of warmth coiling around her heart and she hopes that she'll see Giulia the next month, too, at the competition in Gagny. For now, she is left feeling grateful to her mother, who teaches her the same words in all the languages she feels are relevant – Zoya knows how to say "Good luck!", "Thank you" and "Please" in five languages, excluding her native Russian. Sure, she butchers the pronunciation, and the words don't always make much sense, but she still takes the trouble to learn because she'd like to have someone whisper "Udači!*" in the shell of her ear, and mean it, too.

But for now she sticks to shrugs and nods and handshakes and the broken Italian phrases she knows, trying not to feel too lost in the middle of strangers. (There is one other girl from Russia, just a couple of years older than her, but Diana always sneers and glares, so Zoya tends to avoid her.)

Zoya isn't familiar with anyone else in the "Don Vincenzo Vitti" competition, but she feels a kind of kinship with all the other pianists, something that goes beyond the title of acquaintance but doesn't skim the realm of affection.

(It is just this: it seems like the imposing hallway in which they are waiting has a heartbeat, or maybe their hearts have synchronized to a song known by all, and they can at least be comforted by the idea that everyone else feels it too, nerves morphing into numb fingertips, dread becoming anticipation.)

In no time at all (or so Zoya feels), her name is called, and she walks slowly to the official, one foot in front of the other, even and regal. He bends to place a hand on the back of her blue dress (it's frilly and sparkling and the color of her eyes and Zoya positively loves it), guiding her towards the stage.

She looks straight ahead, shoulders drawn back, as she makes her way towards the piano (Steinway & Sons, all clean lines and the epitome of elegance). Zoya sits and sneaks a peek at the public, and she feels overwhelmed, just for a second, before she places her hands above the keyboard and checks that they're steady (they are).

Zoya draws in a deep breath (the air is musty and vaguely dusty and it reminds her of libraries filled to the brim with old books) and cajoles the keys into song. As music feels the air, the little Russian girl loses sight of everything – the audience and the scores and the prize might as well not exist, they are so inconsequential. Her Universe becomes the piano, and the keys become her world, and the sounds (short and hesitant at first, as the song commands, and then fast and lively all of a sudden) become a story she weaves at her leisure.

It's not the first time she's played in a contest, and it won't be the last.

But it is at this moment in time, in this place in the heart of Italy, that Zoya makes a promise to herself: she will never give up playing, never stay her fingers or still the notes that dance around her heart. It is too deeply ingrained in her, this love for music, to be ignored or cast aside. Zoya is happy, most of the time – but never does she feel such joy as she when plays for an audience. (In their enthrallment she finds glory and the stilted gasps of wonder become her lullaby.)

She is not only a musician, but a performer, too, and she vows never to give it up, come what may.

(But her vow will slink back into obscurity, past memories and into forgetfulness, and in her heart will live songs no longer, but sorrow and pain. Afterwards –so long after that people forgot about her, Russia's child prodigy, and turned her name into legend-, she will return to it, to the piano that was her solace in her youth, an oasis in an endless desert. But it will take a few months, many screaming matches, a soulful conversation or two, and a blossoming romance with one Yuri Plisetsky.)

* * *

 **Firstly, thank you so much for reading! (it means the world to me). I know this chapter is very short -the others are much longer, I promise!- but I wanted to introduce Zoya's character gradually, so she'd blend with the story better. I hope you liked it :) Also:**

 **In bocca al lupo = Good luck (Italian; it literally means "in the wolf's mouth")**

 **Grazie = Thanks (Italian)**

 **Udači = Good luck (Russian, pronunciation only)**

 **The "Don Vincenzo Vitti" competition is actually a real-life event, taking place anually in Castellana Grotte, Italy. I chose it because it has no age limit xD**


	2. Chapter I

_**how they howl (the winds of change)**_

 _"The sun hid her face_

 _in the clouds._

 _She didn't want the world_

 _to see her cry._

 _Her teardrops burned holes_

 _in the horizon,_

 _she lost her desire to shine."_

 _\- Christy Ann Martine_

From the set of his former wife's brows, Yakov Feltsman knows somebody, somewhere, is about to weep.

It's not so different from her usual expression that a stranger may take notice – but he's loved her long enough that he can read her like an open book, world-weary and torn-paged as she is.

Over the years, Yakov has seen her throat arched in passion, her cheeks creased in smiles, her lips pulled down in sorrow. And this surprises people, when he deigns to tell them, how deeply his once-wife feels, like every hurt is an arrow in her heart, every laugh an unexpected gift.

But from her stunted variety of facial expressions, this is the one that scares Yakov the most (even when they shared a name and a home, this scared him, though he will never admit – still, he suspects she already knows).

Lilia is in his office, seated while he stands, and the slight twitch in her elegantly arched eyebrow marks her as a woman scorned - which is unusual, Yakov muses, for a woman so used to doing the scorning.

"Sit down, Yakov." Lilia leisurely flicks her hand towards the chair –the one _in front_ of his desk, the infuriating woman- as if this is her office and he the intruder. "Don't loom over me so."

Yakov feels tempted to refuse her, if only to spite, but he is too curious what brought her out of her studio's golden-tinted gates, so he complies; a little begrudgingly, perhaps, but Lilia pretends not to notice and Yakov pretends not to care).

"What's brought you here, Lilia?" His voice is intentionally harsh, but her name comes out as a caress anyway. "We're very busy, as you well know."

Lilia purses her lips and raises her other brow, as if to ask "Are you really?", and Yakov already tastes arguments on the tip of his tongue, but she speaks before he has any chance to retaliate to the thinly-veiled offence.

"This coming season, I want Yuri to work with a composer for his programs' music."

Yakov is both skeptic and annoyed (and this is not because his former wife had the audacity to barge into his office and demand perhaps the only thing that might increase his already obscenely high rate of falling hair, not at all).

"Since when are you so interested in Yuri?"

"I'm not interested in him, Yakov; only his career." Lilia is lying, and they both know it, but their lies are steps in an endless dance of wills. "I'm still holding hope that he will come to his senses while he's still young, and dance in the ballet" (that is only wishful thinking, because there is a joy in his ice skating that is utterly absent in his dancing, but she contends in needling Yakov, and this was too good an opportunity) "but until then, I _do_ want him to achieve his goals."

Yakov is somewhat mollified, because a determined Lilia is no cause for concern if they are allies, rather than opponents. But suddenly he remembers that they had never been allies, not really, only enemies caught in a lover's truce, and his insides twist in apprehension.

"And who's the composer you have in mind?" He's sure this is not a question out of the blue – she already knows how everything will unravel (Yakov wonders, sometimes, if it's a woman-thing, this prescience, or if it's simply Lilia – he doesn't know which terrifies him most).

"Zoya Romanova."

Lilia's tone is expectative, and Yakov does not disappoint: his nostrils flare and his eyes widen and his bushy eyebrows climb up his wrinkles, like caterpillars reaching wishfully for wings. He already laments the loss of his sanity, because his ex-wife always has her way, and while Zoya and Yuri are, separately, unmanageable at best, Yakov doesn't think Russia – the entirety of Europe, even- stands a chance against their combined, sheer essence of _brat_.

Sometimes –like now- he doesn't know whether Lilia is awe-inspiringly brilliant, or tongue-tyingly terrifying.

(Either way, he's tempted to weep, himself.)

* * *

Yuri always knows when something weighs heavily on Yakov's mind – his coach is not as subtle in his mannerism as he'd like them all to believe. He yells less, for one thing, and tends to trail off in the middle of a sentence; he is blind and deaf to everything but the most obvious of disasters.

The signs are all there, waiting for someone to pick them up. Yuri is the only one who does – if not, he's the only one who cares. (How can he not? Yakov has the same awkward countenance when he tells Yuri that his grandpa can't make it to his competitions, that no, sorry, he can't go home to Moscow, not now, not yet, with the season in full swing.)

So Yuri stops and quietly contemplates how founded his worries are – a bit too quietly, if the strange stares his rink-mates send his way are to be believed. To cover it up, he calls Mila "baba" and makes gagging noises when he passes Viktor and Yuuri by and executes a quad Salcow (flawless, of course; not his favourite, but flashier than the triple Axel he hold close to his heart).

But this only helps so much – by the time practice ends, Yuri is restless, almost jumping out of his skin. He probably has no reasons to worry, but he can't help it; his grandpa is the only person he genuinely loves, and while he acknowledges that his skin is thick and that most things crumble into ashes in the face of his determination, Yuri knows he can't protect his heart. Nikolai's hurts are his' both by birthright and by choice.

Yuri is already planning to hang back and kick the answers right out of his coach, ballerina-style, in the way he knows Yakov hates, when Yakov gestures him closer. Yuri hastily glades towards him, his blades leaving ice specks trailing in his wake, his heart drumming a crazy staccato in his ears.

"What do you want?" Yuri is rude, but so is Yakov, which suits them both just fine. (Their shouting matches never fail to alarm casual bystanders, though.)

"Yuri…" he begins and falters, and a thousand scenarios fitter through Yuri's head, like doves caught mid-flight in a tornado. "How do you feel about working with a composer for next season?"

Relief washes over Yuri as his worries are laid to unceremonious rest, buried deep in his conscious to be remembered come night. But then he realizes he stressed out for almost nothing (or nothing in comparison to his darkest fears), and he feels like yelling. So he does, because he is Yuri Plisetsky, ice-skating prodigy extraordinaire, and he can get away with it.

"Are you out of your goddamned mind? I can't work with a composer!"

"Oh?" Yakov's eyebrows rise in challenge. "And why is that? Because it would require actual human contact?"

"Ha bloody ha. You're an even worse comedian than you are coach, so why not quit both?"

"And then who would put up with you?" They're both glaring, eyes shooting off pinpricks of lightning, turquoise on blue, blue on turquoise.

"Your ex-wife, for one." Yuri expects Yakov to flinch (doesn't even imagine that he wouldn't), but his coach merely grimaces, a strange glint spinning in his eyes, like a coin that's about to drop.

"Ah, yes. You might be right about that." The coin drops, and Yakov spins around and leisurely walks towards the nearest exit.

"W-wait, you old geezer! Why did you ask me this?" Yuri doesn't like it when other people storm off in the middle of a fight – that's his signature move as much as the Quad Flip is Viktor's, and Yakov, more than anyone, knows that, dammit.

The older man doesn't even break his long-legged stride.

"Ask Lilia, when you see her."

Yuri growls low in his throat, and fancies himself as terrifying as his moniker ("Ice Tiger of Russia" is the only one he likes). With narrowed eyes, he stomps off the ice, puts on his skate guards and makes for the locker room.

There's a strange tightness in his chest, a certain foreboding feeling that envelops him like a threadbare blanket. There was something in Yakov's voice, something he can't pinpoint that nags him… Yuri shudders, but he can't quite shake off the sensation.

* * *

When Yuuri Katsuki -already showered and dressed- sees his blonde namesake approaching, he smiles easily and asks if he wants to join him and Viktor for an early dinner. Yuri scoffs and doesn't answer, his shoulder hitting Yuuri's as he passes him. Or that is his intention, Yuuri guesses, but with their height difference Yuri's bony shoulder only grazes Yuuri's biceps, and the Japanese hides a smirk behind his collar.

Viktor, tying his shoelaces on a nearby bench, idly wonders where does so small a person hide such anger.

The youngster leaves to shower, a navy cloud of temperament shadowing his footsteps.

"Why does he have to be so rude?" Yuuri's words hold the echo of a weary sigh.

"That's just how he is, lovely Piglet mine. Nothing to be done about that."

Yuuri's frown turns into an embarrassed smile, rose powder dusting his cheeks. Viktor rises and comes to stand before him, light blue eyes smiling in kind. The Russian's fingers trail light as snowflakes up his lover's arm, coming to rest on the back of his neck, under a soft curtain of black hair. Viktor's head bends, just a little, so he's facing Yuuri properly, and Yuuri thinks Viktor is going to kiss him, and he feels anticipation blooming in his chest, a songbird unfurling its wings.

But Viktor merely allows their breaths to mingle, and speaks of another man (and were that man not a boy, in fact, and one they both know, Yuuri would be very mad indeed. As it his, he is mildly irritated.)

"Or perhaps Yurio wouldn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed, if someone were to keep him from turning over."

Yuuri touches Viktor's collarbone with his fingertips, hesitance dissipating at the sight of his enamored smile. "He's barely turned sixteen, Viktor. He's too young for that." Yuuri feels obliged to scold, though he thinks Viktor isn't serious. (But he can't be too sure – the Russian's sense of humor eludes him on the best of days)

"Ah, spoken like a true father, Yuuri." Yuuri chokes on air and reddens even further. "Besides, Piglet, love spares no one. And love as true as ours pays no mind to age, or gender, or religion."

Yuuri's smile turns breathtaking, and Viktor's heart misses a beat or two or three. He doesn't bother counting, these days. It's happening too often, too suddenly for him to do anything but enjoy the sensation.

Yuuri's tone takes on a contemplative note. "I hope he finds love, too. He deserves it."

Viktor hums a little and brushes his lips against Yuuri's, marveling for the twentieth time that day how soft they can be, how warm and welcoming and smiling. (He's not quite capable of thought, with Yuuri's mouth on his', but if he were, he'd hope that love made a more pleasant person out of Yuri Plisetsky.)

All things cease to matter and their universe blurs at the corners – all they see is each other and all they feel is love entwined with passion. But it doesn't last longer than a few seconds, because that's the moment Yuri chooses to make his entrance by slamming the door closed.

A dark scowl marring his delicate features, he crosses his arms and half-shouts, half-demands, "Well? Aren't we going to dinner?"

Viktor sighs despairingly, Yuuri smiles abashedly and Yurio scowls even harder, but they go to dinner anyway.

* * *

Zoya Romanova's streps are brisk, hovering on the edge of hurried, as she navigates the hectic foot traffic of Sankt Petersburg. There are so many people (doting grandparents and restless children, busy fathers and busier mothers, absent-minded teenagers and everything in between) that she sometimes gets jostled, or has her feet stepped on, but it doesn't bother her. (It used to, though.)

Zoya is nothing more than a short figure bundled in a grey jacket and she positively _revels_ in it, the anonymity of being a girl aimlessly chasing pavements in a spring day that's close to ending.

It gives her hope that she can be anyone but who she actually is.

She hears church bells chiming in the breeze, so she looks at her watch and hastily bites back a curse when she sees the time. Zoya breaks into a run, straining her already aching calves. Some passerby crane their neck to watch her ebony hair make soundless waves in her wake, but most pay her no mind – she is just another youth, sprinting to catch her destiny by the collar and glare it into submission.

Five minutes later and Zoya is standing in front of Matryoshka, bent with her hands on her knees, panting as if she'd just run a marathon. She does her best to ignore the stitch in her side and commands her facial muscles into an overly friendly smile - the one she reserves for the most horrid of customers, the best she can manage while she is so tired she sways on her feet.

Zoya puts her hand on the quaint diner's door handle just as it open from the inside, and it all happens in a flash (it lasts no more than a heartbeat or a fluttering of wings and it marks the start of a new beginning): she is standing, mentally preparing herself for a few hours of sepia-tinted boredom, and then she is sprawled on the ground, a heavy, warm something holding her prisoner.

Zoya had closed her eyes on impact, scrambling for purchase where there was none, but now she opens them and finds herself staring into the most gorgeous pair of eyes she's ever seen: a turquoise so pure that makes her think of far-off waters caressed by sunshine, blonde lashes so lovely she wants to steal them for herself.

Zoya's marvel lasts all of a second; then, she begins screeching.

"Get off, you blind savage! Off, off, off!"

The boy quickly complies and scurries to half-crouch next to Zoya, a blush blooming high on his cheeks. But then he registers her words, and a fierce scowl takes hold of his face.

"Who are you calling a blind savage, you complete and utter moron?! That's a door right there" he viciously points to the offending object "which civilized people use for walking through. You can't just stand there and expect to keep your ugly mug intact!"

Their voices (loud, and louder still) are attracting an audience, and Zoya dimly registers a couple exiting the restaurant – a silver haired man wearing a soothing expression, and an Asian nervously wringing his hands.

"I was not just standing there, you unmannered waste of space!" Disdain is dripping from Zoya's words, and she jabs her pointer in the hollow of the blonde's throat, a courageous knight wielding a spear with the intention of slaying a dragon. "But when you open a door, you're expected to look in front of you before crossing the threshold, so you don't trample the poor soul there like a wild, shaggy, blonde goat!"

The boy's eyes are blazing like twin suns. "Sorry, midget, I don't usually look below eye-level."

They get up, movements jerky as to convey their general distaste for the other. Zoya can't help but feel like she's won a contest when she observes she's taller than him (she's never been so happy to wear heels).

"Yes, I suppose you'd be hard pressed to find someone shorter than you." A smirk adorns Zoya's face as she speaks and satisfaction is a drug in her bloodstream.

She sees the boy's hands fisting, skin drawn white-tight over his knuckles, and Zoya wonders if she's made a mistake and it's her face that will suffer the consequences. But the silver-haired man -the one who laughed earlier- closes his own long-fingered hand over the blonde's mouth, muffling another bout of expletives.

"He says he's sorry, Miss. Don't mind him – his height's just a very touchy subject." The man smiles genially, like someone plucked starts out of the night sky and pressed them to his lips. "He's going to behave now, aren't you, Yurio?" The last part he mumbles, but Zoya hears loud and clear, and has to suppress the sudden urge to laugh.

Zoya smiles, too, but decides to stares into the stranger's blue-green eyes. "Listen to papa, little rabid boy. He knows best."

His bright orbs spark with unadulterated fury, and Zoya is amused despite herself. She bends closer (making sure Yurio sees with crystal-clear certainty that she has, in fact, to bend) and tweaks his nose.

For good measure, she winks at him, too, and skips inside the diner, entirely ignoring the spectators, as if it were a common occurrence. The last thing Zoya sees before the door closes is the silver-haired man hugging the blonde brute with the strength and affection of a straitjacket, and the black-haired Asian standing in prime position for lecturing (hands on his hips, head shaking dejectedly from side to side and disapproval etched onto his features).

Zoya pushes the door closed and promptly walks behind the counter, high heels clacking on the hardwood floor. She nods at her fellow co-workers, humming a little to herself, and is pleasantly surprised to find her elderly boss in the back room, where she is searching for her uniform.

"You seem very happy today, Zoyachka." His gruff voice rings with cautious hope, like he wants to pour liquid sunshine and rainbows into her.

"Nothing so excessive, Mr. Antonov. Just laughing at the stupidity of boys these days."

He huffs out a snicker and good-naturedly ushers her to work, and Zoya thinks nothing can dampen her high spirits.

But clearly, _clearly_ she forgot to factor in Lilia Baranovskaya, because this is what happens a couple or so hours later: the black-haired teen is tending to a table full of boys who keep staring at her chest, prerequisite fake smile pasted on her face, when she hear the bells above the door chime, signaling another customer. Still, all is fine, all is well, except that her feet hurt and she does her best to delay her going home.

Her fellow waitress, Anya (who despises being called Anastasia for reasons not disclosed) is barely juggling three full trays, so Zoya strides towards the newly occupied table and feels her smile crumbling to pieces. This is the last place she would expect so see a woman of Lilia's caliber enter (Zoya loves the diner and its homely atmosphere, but her mother's friend is too regal to fit with checkered tabletops and dusty music).

So if not for food, Zoya muses, Lilia can only be there to torment her. The teen marshes to her like a woman heading for the guillotine, her steps dragging, shoulders hunched in resignation.

"Oh, for God's sake, sit up straight, Zoyachka! Young ladies should glide when they walk, not stomp like petulant baby elephants."

"Good evening, Aunt Lilia." The former prima is not her relation, of course, but this is what Zoya has always called her, since she was a tiny sprite used to twirling in a sparkly tutu. "What can I get you?"

"Two of your best compositions, preferably for piano, preferably soon. And a coffee, while you're at it."

"I'm afraid that's not on the menu." Zoya's tone is a monotonous grey – it's not the first time Lilia has asked her for music, and it won't be the last instance she refuses. "How do you want your coffee? Pitch black?" ("Like your soul", Zoya wants to say yet doesn't, and Lilia hears it all the same.)

"Then change the menu." Lilia's tone brooks no arguments. "And make the coffee scalding hot, like the pits of the Hell I'll put you through if you continue to be obstinate."

To a stranger, it might seem like a fight – it's not. But it's not quite the warm affection it used to be, either (for now it's the best they can do).

"Old age has made you mean, Aunt."

"I am not old." Lilia enunciates stiffly, and a half-smirk seeps through Zoya's standoffish mask. The ballet dancer had aged elegantly, but aged nonetheless; she doesn't like it when people count her wrinkles and think "frail", so naturally, this is what Zoya endeavors to do.

"Of course not, Aunt."

"Enough nonsense." Lilia laces her hands on the merry red and white tabletop, and this is when Zoya's heart start beating a frenzied rhythm, because she realizes that this is not one of the older woman's half-hearted attempts to make her dust off her piano- she sees determination in Lilia's faded eyes, and they spell her misfortune. "You've been as stubborn as a mule for two years, and I accepted that because I thought you needed time to heal. But no more, Zoyachka."

"And who are you to make that decision for me?" Zoya's whisper is an angry whip against the dull chatter of the restaurant.

"Someone who loves you, who has your best interests at heart." Lilia's tone is as cool as ever, but emotion swirls in her eyes and breaks her composure.

"No." Zoya crosses her arms over her white T-shirt, feet spread in an almost combative stance. (It makes Lilia almost smile, to see that her favorite pretend-niece hasn't lost her inner fire.)

"Yes."

"You can't make me." An arched eyebrow, a challenge in her voice. Lilia hears it and already she tastes victory on her tongue.

"It would be such a shame if the authorities were to hear of your living conditions. And imagine what will the press say, when they hear about Russia's youngest music prodigy working for scraps in a no-name diner and looking dead on her feet. All because you refuse to write a couple of musical pieces, when I know it comes as naturally as breathing to you." Gently mocking to the last – that is Lilia, steel incased in silk, a gem polished until it cuts.

Zoya's complexion, already lily-white, whitens even further and her eyes are large with shock.

"You wouldn't do that." The teen's voice is a faint echo of what it is was minutes before. With no more false bravado, it holds a tremor so fine as to be nonexistent – but Lilia is looking for it, so she hears and ignores the sound of her own heart cracking.

"Of course I would."

"What do you want me to do?" Zoya's expression is pinched in anguish, even as she thinks up a thousand different rebellious ideas to get her out of this mess; none that she thinks will work, though, and desperation twists her insides.

"Come tomorrow at five o'clock to the ice rink I used to take you to when you were younger, and I'll introduce you to the boy you'll have to compose for."

"Fine." When Lilia stills remains seated, Zoya asks in a deceptively saccharine tone "Can I do anything else for you? Or are you simply waiting to destroy another aspect of my life tonight?"

"Don't be melodramatic, Zoya. Just my coffee, if you please."

Zoya goes to place the order, not even bothering with a nod or any such acknowledgement. Lilia purses her lips and remind herself that she's doing the right thing, even as remorse piles into a mountain in the confines of her heart.

When Zoya returns ten minutes later, she does so with a lukewarm coffee, so sweet it is a clean shot of diabetes. Lilia only finds out after she takes a sip and barely avoids choking on it. Still, she tips an enormous amount that Zoya takes begrudgingly, cheeks burning in shame, and leaves with as little fanfare as she'd entered.

The black-haired girl stares after her in thought, throat constricting with sobs barely kept at bay, and she wonders how she even dared to dream it could end in a different manner. When Anya shakes Zoya out of her stupor, she still doesn't speak, but gestures with elaborate hand-signs that her shift is over.

Zoya is concentrating on keeping appearances, so she misses Anya's concerned look. She lasts only until she reaches the staff's bathroom, where she curls up in a ball of misery and sorrow on the cold tiles. The music prodigy bites her fist until she draws blood and her mouth fills with the tangy taste of copper, tears sliding down her cheeks in a torrent of distress.

Her broken heart (the one she's worked so hard at patching up) breaks anew, and Zoya feels as fragile as spun glass - just as empty, just as cold.

If Aunt Lilia says she loves her –and she must, she _must_ , because how can she not when she's been a second mother of sorts?- then why hadn't she done anything? If she knew her situation, why hadn't she moved a single finger to help her honorary niece?

Zoya doesn't know and doesn't resolve to ask – it's brief, the thought, but still she conjures it (was she as bad a niece as she was daughter? Is she so wholly unworthy without her silver tongue and fancy music? Unworthy even of love and kindness?)

Zoya desperately doesn't want the answer to be yes – but she can't help but entertain the idea that it is so, anyway.

* * *

 **Whew. There, it's done, and I'm a nervous wreck. I never actually realised how hard it is to convey something through writing, how much of a struggle it is to develop characters gradually. I mean, they live inside my head - they can hardly surprise me, can they? At the very least, I know everything about Zoya, and I'm not exactly sure how to make you feel the same. Oh, well. It would certainly help if you left a review. Or a favourite. Or a follow. Either. All of them. I'm not very picky. :)) Ok, shameless self-advertising - over. On that note, thank you very much to everyone who already did one of the above or simply read a measly one thousand words and decided to give me a chance. Thank you, really.**


	3. Chapter II

_._

 _._

 _._

 _ **of puppet masters (and the tricks they play on us)**_

 _"Restless days and sleepless nights. Always fighting with all your heart and soul so as not to fail at living." -Charles Bukowski_

 _7:17 am_

For Zoya, awakening comes like this: sunlight spilling into her room like a soundless thief to tangle in her curly mane, spread over textbooks and pens where she fell asleep at her desk. She blinks blearily, sleep tangled in her lashes, and raises a hand to cover a yawn.

For a moment, the sun is shining bright and the day is full of promise – but the moment passes all too soon, and she is thrust back into her life, where problems cling to her like dew does to grass in spring.

Zoya checks her watch and promptly bangs her head against the desk, just as her alarm starts wailing an urgent tone, mournful to her ears– no matter how much she hurries, she will be late to her first class (Physics, which she despises and actively has nightmares about), her back hurts from dozing slumped against the desk, her left cheek is smudged with paint and ink and the meeting with Lilia hangs over her head like a ticking clock (the kind they use for bombs) that's close to stopping.

She hastily gathers her things, pens and markers and notebooks, all the while thinking of what ifs (What if I never show up and Lilia waits and waits until she grows bored, what then? Won't she leave me alone? What if I tell her the truth, the whole unabridged version, what then?) –but she dismisses the idle questions just as quickly, because Lilia doesn't make threats she cannot uphold and Zoya doesn't want anyone meddling in her life.

No, she decides as she conceals the purple bags under her eyes, she will sidestep her pride and arrive fashionably late (naturally), with her back straight and her head held high, a paper princess balancing a too big crown on her head.

All she has to remember is not to show fear, lest Lilia scents it and uses it against her.

But before that she has school, where Zoya welcomes the distractions and strives to be the same as she always is: she takes notes in loopy writing and speaks to her friends and smiles at strangers in the hallways. When people speak to her she listens attentively and though she never rises her hand she always knows the answer if the teacher calls upon her, and when the bell rings for lunch and her classmates depart for the cafeteria, she waves jauntily and goes to the library to eat written words instead.

Zoya is the same as always. And yet.

And yet worry seeps into her eyes and changes them from chrome to periwinkle, and her smiles are a little forced, held together by a thread, and her spine is a little too stiff for the cheerful air she wants to exude.

Every time Zoya blinks she sees Lilia's stoic expression and there are ballerinas crudely sketched in the corners of all her notebooks. In class Zoya pays attention, but when she has a couple of seconds to herself she daydreams scenarios and passable remarks, polite bordering on snarky –her specialty, if she may say so herself- that she discards almost as soon as they spring up in her mind. She watches the clock's hands as they move, slow but somehow fast, and she swears she feels the seconds slipping between her fingers like silver, scorching sands.

Her apprehension rises by the hour, and memories come unbidden to the forefront of her mind (piano keys under her too small fingertips, a hand guiding her gently and laughing at her mistakes, a younger Lilia whose blue eyes aren't faded but sparkling like sapphires and twinkling like Christmas lights).

It is only as she walks towards the ice rink that Zoya realizes her thoughts got so twisted that she forgot to wonder about the unknown variable in the equation that is her life – the boy whose heart and soul she must learn, his desires that she'll have to attune to. The epiphany strikes her midstep and renders her motionless; a hurried walker stumbles into her and mumbles uncomplimentary things about teenagers _sotto voce*_. Zoya spares him only a fraction of a second – enough time to raise both her charcoal brow and middle finger, and then she continues on her path, other matters plaguing her mind.

When Zoya arrives at the rink it is barely a quarter past five, the time which Lilia had forcefully specified. The girl doesn't think she's ever been so aware of her heart, which beats faster and faster, a hummingbird trapped in the cage of her ribs. Her head is lighter, too, her tongue heavy and awkward in her mouth.

Zoya's footsteps are soft and hesitant as she makes for the girl's locker room– she hasn't been to the rink in a long while, and it's bittersweet, seeing the pristine white walls again, the fancy wooden doors. Zoya stops and draws in the smell of dust and ice, fills her lungs with the crisp scent of winter and thinks – "Oh. It looks the same but doesn't feel the same, so maybe it's me that's changed."

Trusting her memory, Zoya navigates the labyrinthine hallways and ducks inside the girls' bathroom. She checks her watch again (still too early) and moves to inspect her reflection in front of a mirror that's specked with drops of water. Zoya studies the contours of her face and finds imperfections everywhere: eyes wide open with fright, a deep groove nestled between her brows, pulse a flickering tattoo on her neck.

Zoya slides down to the floor, positioning her back so it rests against the wall, and does what she always does in distress.

She calls Yelena, who holds the distinguished title of Best Friend in All the History of Best Friends even if she lives in Moscow and Zoya lives in Sankt Petersburg and they never seem to be able to match their schedules to meet. But, in Zoya's own words: "True friendship trumps all and don't you dare try to tell me otherwise or I'll block your number and you'll be miserable without my presence to brighten your life."

" _Privet*_ , Lena. You got a few minutes?"

"For you? Always, honey bunny babypoo." Yelena's voice comes across as high-pitched cooing and Zoya remains unimpressed.

"Are you doing this because you want to give the impression that your life love actually exists or are you simply trying to annoy me?"

"A little bit of both, sweetie cake."

"Lovely." Zoya deadpans.

"Well, there _is_ a shifty guy that's practically smoldering me with his eyes." Even so, Yelena doesn't seem too concerned.

"Certified stalker?" Concern and righteous anger make Zoya's shoulders stiffen.

"Nah, I don't think so. More like an outcast trying to look _cool._ " Yelena says the word with disgust and Zoya smothers a chuckle. "But don't worry, my brother and his big fists are incoming. So what's up, girl?"

"Right. How much do you remember from your ice-skating crazed fangirl phase?"

"A lot, seeing as it's still ongoing."

"Really?" Zoya asks in surprise, interest very much piqued. "I thought you'd moved on to dolphin shows."

"Yeah, but I grew bored after a few days. There's a limit to how many tricks they can pull off before they get mindlessly repetitive, and I'm way past that." Yelena says dismissively, and Zoya smiles genuinely for the first time that day, because it's so like her best friend and despite their phone calls she misses her and it's either this or crying. "Besides, two of Viktor Nikiforov's records were surpassed at the Grand Prix a few months ago; and it doesn't hurt that all the skaters are really _Hot_." Zoya can hear the capitalized H and huffs a laugh, her shoulders shaking with mirth. If grammar allowed, her friend would probably insert a double _t_ , too, just to get her point across.

"Do you remember the ice rink Mama used to take us to when we were little?" Zoya asks as she lounges in the bathroom of that very rink.

"Of course I do." Memory and affection warm Yelena's voice, because she likes Moscow but she doesn't love it, not like she loves Sankt Petersburg and all the people that reside in it.

"Lilia wants me to write a couple of songs for a boy that skates there. I don't suppose any names come to mind?"

"Baranosvkaya? Ugh. I hate that slave driver. I thought you gave up music for good – what did she do to make you reconsider?" Suspicion hones Yelena's voice to a sharpened blade.

"I'm sure the sentiment is mutual. I'm just going to write the songs, not play them – Lilia's a very persuasive blackmailer, you know." Zoya says lightly, because she'd discovered at a young age that if she curls her lips just so, crooked and wry, and if she inserts the right amount of dryness to her tone she doesn't have to bother with lies, because they make the truth seem like a joke with the tiniest core of reality.

"Aha." On her end, Yelena hears the shift in Zoya's voice and narrows her viridian eyes in suspicion. "There's this boy that she helped coach this season. He's a real prodigy – they even say he'll be better than Viktor Nikiforov by the time he's twenty." Yelena says so reverently that Zoya doesn't dare ask who Viktor Nikiforov actually is.

"Color me impressed." Zoya's skepticism is almost palpable, but Yelena is undeterred in her excitement.

"And that's not all. He's our age and so beautiful it hurts and half of Europe is in love with him."

"Sounds like Disney's Prince Charming described through pink tinted glasses."

"Hah. More like Cinderella. I read somewhere that he was poor as dirt before he made it big."

"Did you cyber stalk him?" Zoya means to sound suspicious, but there's too much good natured humor in her voice for that.

"He's lived with his grandfather Nikolai ever since he was young because his parents are either dead or they don't care; he was eight years, three months and twenty seven days old when Yakov discovered him in his last scouting spree. I did the math myself. Oh, and he has this cute obsession with cats." Yelena says pleasantly, in lieu of giving a straight answer.

"Sometimes I fear for your sanity. Truly." Zoya proclaims, a smile skirting the edges of her lips.

"You're not the only one." Yelena sighs deeply in resignation.

"I'm starting to wonder – are you the president of his fanbase? Head fangirl? What's your official title?"

"We're – I mean, they're called Yuri's Angels. I was one too, but then I found out he hates his fans, so it seemed pointless." Yelena replies primly.

"Really? Why?" Zoya's opinion of him plummets – back when she herself was a rising star, she'd cherished each and every one of her fans. To this day, her deepest, darkest fear is disappointing the people who believe in her.

"To be fair, they're well over on the east side of crazy, but mainly he's a rude douchebag. Though I'm still going to hate you if you'll spend hours on end with him." Yelena says jokingly.

"I'll get you an autograph." Zoya promises.

"And now I pledge my unwavering love to you. Listen, girl, I gotta go, but his name's Yuri Plistesky. Look him up, drool, and thank me later. Also, keep me updated."

Zoya murmurs her goodbyes and ends the call. She stays still for a moment, but curiosity gets the better of her so she rolls her eyes heavenward and half-smiles and searches the supposed young Adonis by name. She zooms in on the first picture she receives and something about him nags her. He's beautiful, like Yelena said, but there's something familiar in the planes and arches of his face, in the feral look of his eyes.

Zoya taps her foot in thought and when she finally recognizes him as the boy from last night, the one who'd toppled her over, she laughs until her stomach hurts and teardrops gather at the outer corners of her eyes.

This is how Mila finds her a few minutes later: on the floor, laughing to the point of rolling, her head a wild mess of loose, black curls.

Mila smiles bemusedly and coughs the way people cough when they want to subtly capture one's attention. When Zoya remains oblivious in her mirth, she coughs again and this time the younger girl notices her.

The teen stills herself midlaugh, a kind of awkwardness descending upon them as Zoya looks at Mila and Mila looks at Zoya. The black haired girl can feel a blush taking hold of her cheeks as she jumps to her feet and gets out a "Hi!" too squeaky for her liking. Mila blinks and smiles and blinks again.

Dusting herself off, Zoya proceeds to dismantle any suspicions. "I'm sorry, you're probably wondering why I was laughing like a maniac and I probably already made this worse, I'm talented like that, but my name is Zoya Romanova and I promise I'm not really a maniac, it was a very inappropriate figure of speech – ".

She doesn't get further because Mila is unsuccessfully trying to hold back giggles, but Zoya'd have probably stopped on her own after her brain had caught up with her mouth.

"It's okay, it's okay, I'm sure you're appropriately harmless." Mila introduces herself and they shake hands and this time Zoya does marginally better at explaining her motives.

"Lilia appointed me as one of your rink mate's composers for next season." Zoya says calmly, sans blushing and fumbling for words.

"Ah, so that's why Yuri's fuse was even shorter these days." Mila's bright blue eyes turn mischievous.

"He knows already?" Zoya feels like a pawn in one of Lilia's many games, but she's not sure who either of their opponent are. "And he doesn't want his own song?" Even if the boy's negative reaction suits her purposes, Zoya can't help but feel offended – she's a prodigy in her own right, or at least she was before she suddenly changed life's paths, but still, what skater doesn't want an homage in audible form, a song that's just for them?

"Yuri's a special blend of snowflake." Mila shrugs apologetically. "But if it's not too much to ask, give him a chance – I promise, underneath that prickly, hedgehog exterior, there's a heart of gold."

"That's not very encouraging." Zoya thinks, even as she nods and flashes Mila a smile.

* * *

 _5:34 pm_

Yuri is most empathically _not_ amused. Neither is Lilia, if her flared nostrils and tapping foot are any indication.

"I won't." Yuri's voice is strong and strained, his pretty, pretty eyes narrowed into tiny slits of ice.

"Of course you will." Lilia's tone is dismissive, a touch bored – feigned or otherwise.

(Yakov is snickering in the background, making no effort whatsoever to hide his amusement, and privately thinking that he wished he'd pitted those two against each other years ago.)

"No."

It's the thirtieth time he's said "no" in half as many minutes, and Yuri's temper is at breaking point. He is Yakov's youngest student and while that would normally make him a god among kings, it also means he is the only one who has a strict schooling program. So after hours and hours in which he was forced to mingle with some of the most idiotic and ignorant individuals he's ever met, take tests and pretend to listen to the painful droning of a bored teacher, Lilia's interference in the only part of his life he thought he controlled is more than he can take.

Lilia opens her mouth, an exasperated "yes" on the tips of her lips, when Viktor chooses to interrupt, ushered by the other Yuuri, who understands their stances even if the words are foreign to his ear. (Lilia is partly glad of this: she is fully aware of how petty and childish she is acting, but Yuri has an unnerving way of sneaking under her skin.)

"Now, now, children, what seems to be the problem?" His pale blue orbs are twinkling like snow under sunlight and his shoulders shake with suppressed laughter.

The woman is the one who answers, distributing her glare evenly between the two younger males (Viktor doesn't fancy himself a sexist, but he's never seen a man do that, either, so he gathers it must be some kind of genetic heirloom, passed from mother onto daughter onto daughter), while Yuri resumes his silent glowering.

"Yuri is a stubborn _little_ " she viciously stresses the word "boy who refuses to entertain the idea of working with a composer."

Viktor twirls whimsically, every bit the prince of his own fairy-tale (he loves showing off, especially when he knows his soulmate is watching), claps twice and ends with his arm sprawled across Yuri's shoulders.

"Aw, but Yurio, why not? It's a great opportunity."

Yuri purses his lips and tries to shakes off Viktor's arm, but the older man isn't budging. Instead, he pins Lilia's eyes with his own, but they tell him nothing. They do, however, share an exasperated shake of their head at Yuri's senseless stubbornness.

Viktor puts more of his weight on Yuri, so the blonde, whisked out of his musings, shoves Viktor's arm off and crosses his own after he's at a distance he considers sufficient.

"If it's such a great opportunity, why don't you do it?"

"Because Lilia, for whatever reason, doesn't like me nearly enough to strike a deal with a composer in my name."

Viktor says this jokingly, with the certainty of a man who knows he is beloved wherever he goes. Clearly, he is not expecting her answer.

"Indeed." Lilia's tone is dried than deserts in summer, which causes Yuri to snicker and Viktor to pout.

Her phone starts ringing – loudly, unexpectedly, undeniably Rammstein, and it leaves both males flabbergasted, gazing open-mouthed at her rapidly departing form as she bark commands into her phone. (Once, when they were young and unafraid, Yakov had recommended Lilia to go into the military; in jest or not, his words hadn't been well received, and his left cheek had smarted for hours. He still stands by his point – only he does so in silence.)

Deeming that part of the rink safe, Yuuri approaches the two persons that had stealthily wormed their way into his heart (one more than the other and in different ways, but still).

"Why is she so mad at you, Yurio?" He asks, and the conversation automatically changes to English.

Yuri gnashes his teeth at the nickname and resolves to lie to his dentist.

"She's mad because she won't get her way." He is scornful, but somehow proud, because they measured their contumacy and he is the undisputed winner.

"Are you sure about that?" Viktor points towards the doors where Lilia is dragging in a girl, teenaged and seemingly unwilling.

"Hey, isn't that…" Yuuri begins but trails off, turning towards Yuri who isn't there anymore, but speeding towards the margin of the rink closest to the doors. Instead, he sees Viktor adorning a contemplative pose.

"Viktor? What's happening?" Yuuri is getting increasingly concerned, because his lover's face is changing expressions quicker than he can decipher.

"Nothing, Piglet. At least not yet." His smile is distinctly crooked –so different from the smiles he gives to interviewers and fans- and the quirk of his lips holds a secret, or the knowledge of one's beginning.

But his smile is so quietly beautiful that Yuuri doesn't ask for details, simply following Viktor when he twines their fingers and glides closer to the former ballerina and her bickering companions.

* * *

Yuri's hands smack on the thick glass that acts like a fence and his abrupt halt sends shimmering ice shards in the air.

"You!" He bends forward and points his right hand so close to the girl's face that her chrome eyes crisscross to keep it in her field of vision.

"Unfortunately." Her tone is clipped and her lips curl in distaste, but Yuri has the feeling that she's laughing at him.

"You've met?" Lilia raises a finely arched brow and slaps down Yuri's offending member.

"Unofficially." It's the girl who answers as she takes a tiny step backwards and slips her hand into Yuri's to shake. "Zoya Romanova, your new best friend slash composer for the foreseeable future."

"The pianist with the crazy mother?" Yuri doesn't want it to come across as mean –no meaner than his usual, anyway- but maybe it does, because Lilia startles and the girl's grip turns crushing.

"And you're Yuri Plisetsky, the destitute orphan." The smile never leaves Zoya's face, but it turns cold and feral, like a sleek panther taunting its prey.

Yuri digs his blades in the ice and yanks Zoya closer until they are nose to nose and eye to eye and the girl has to stop herself from smacking in the panel. A hush settles over the rink and everybody is watching the two of them from the corners of their eyes, but they are oblivious to everything bar the fury simmering in their veins.

"My parents aren't dead." Yuri says quietly, his words dripping menace.

"And my mother isn't crazy."

A moment, perhaps two, and they return their hands to their sides, both denying the urge to rub their aching fingers.

Lilia clears her throat, a bewildered gleam in her blue eyes. "I'm glad that's settled. Now, just try not to kill each other – it's bad for business." Saying so, she spins on her pointy heels and, on her way to the exits, intercepts a shamelessly eavesdropping Yakov by pulling on his ear.

"I don't want to work with a composer." Whatever response Yuri is expecting, it certainly isn't this: a tired half-smile edged with bitterness, an unassuming shrug and a few words that make him wonder.

"And I don't want to compose."

"Now what?" Yuri isn't sure how to react, and his own indecisiveness is beginning to irritate him.

"Now" Zoya pauses and reads the time "you have exactly 28 minutes to inspire me." She flicks her hair over her shoulder and turns around –much as Lilia did earlier- in search for a seat.

"And how the hell do I do that?" Yuri's frustrations levels are well past boiling point and he wants everyone to know.

Zoya merely tilts her head to one side and raises a hand, as if in farewell.

"Astonish me."

And Yuri is left standing like an angel bereft of wings, a demon devoid of horns, while Zoya has the dramatic exit he'd have liked for himself.

He can't help hating her just a little.

* * *

Zoya pauses her seat hunting enough to stop by Mila, who is in the process of getting off her skate guards.

"That's not a hedgehog exterior. Hedgehogs are cute and lovable; he's not. He's just a jerk." Jaw clenched, Zoya nods once and abruptly whisks off to an empty margin of the rink.

(Georgi, who hears the girls talking but has no knowledge of the former conversation adopts a comically stunned expression, but Mila merely drags a hand through her hair and offers no answers.)

Still angry and bitter, Zoya leans her forearms on the glass panel and glares at Yuri's rapidly moving form, wishing she could shoot lasers from her eyes and praying that he'll fall. When he doesn't immediately tumble to kiss the ice, she pouts and shifts her gaze to the other skaters gracefully twirling and spinning in the vicinity.

They're beautiful, all of them, beautiful black swans playing with gravity. There's Mila who she's just met, her short, fiery hair swaying wildly around her head as she curls one leg in a graceful arch, a dark haired man who glides dramatically, a plethora of stories hidden in his movements, and the two men who accompanied Yuri the other evening. They're more playful, these two, skating in sync rather than apart, and Zoya battles with a blush just from tracking their steps.

Even so, Yuri paints a striking tableau with his white blond locks whipping his sharp jaw, an ethereal prince of white dancing among a sea of mourner's black.

His earlier comment rings loud and clear in Zoya's ears, and she can't help but hate him a little.

Still, she does what she thinks she must: she studies his steps and the placement of his hands and waits for inspiration to hit her. (It doesn't, of course.) There is no music to follow, no notes that Zoya can keep track of, so she is lost in the story that he weaves and Yuri is wild to her senses.

In his bowed head she reads not humility, not quite, not even obedience, but a subdued kind of love, and the graceful arch of his back spells his passion for all the world to see. Yuri's hands move in a flurry of gentle marvel and he jumps suddenly, fast and high, like he's just broken through a witch's spell. He looks like an angel dancing the hours away on Heaven's plains, and Zoya swears her heart climbs to her throat every time his blades stop touching the ice and adrenaline sizzles in her blood, like her soul jumps with his.

And as Yuri spins and twirls and jumps, Zoya wonders about the song he is skating to – and more importantly, if she can do better.

* * *

After the teens' heated exchange of words, Viktor keeps an eye on them while the other stays firmly on his Yuuri. But it is only after twenty minutes or so that he is certain Yuri is lost to the world, lost in the music that has to play right alongside his thoughts.

Viktor's hand lingers on Yuuri's forearm as he tells his lover to take a breather, and then he skates lazily towards the enigmatic girl, afraid that his sudden appearance will startle her – or worse, scare her off.

He stops beside her but she remains oblivious, either enthralled by Yuri's performance (because it is one, even if there's no audience around) or suspicious of his motives.

"Beautiful, no?" Viktors asks and keenly watches her face as she answers.

"That sounds very pedophilic. Ominous, too." Zoya says conversationally, only angling her face towards Viktor's as he begins to sputter incoherently.

"As for the choreography – it's marvelous. He tells such a beautiful story, even when there's no music." Her face is full of childlike wonder, so Viktor figures he can forgive her earlier comment. But only just.

"Why, thank you. I did it myself." He says proudly, but in a casual sort of way, as he extends his hand. "Viktor Nikiforov, at your service." He smiles genially and Zoya thinks he expects some sort of recognition, but he seems so nice that she feels reluctant to admit his name sparks no prior knowledge.

"Zoya Romanova. I'm not quite sure who you are" she sees his smile fade the tiniest bit and suppresses a wince "but for what it's worth, my best friends worships you. Still, it's very nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Nikiforov."

"Likewise, but please – call me Viktor. You're Yuri's composer, right? I have a feeling we're going to see a lot of each other these next few months." There is some sort of anticipation dancing in his light orbs that Zoya wonders about.

"Lilia told you, then?" Zoya smiles wryly. "Not necessarily. Just until I whip up two songs. Which reminds me – what piece is Yuri dancing to?"

"On love: Agape. Are you familiar with it, perchance?"

Zoya thinks back on practicing Agape with her mother, remembers being delighted about dressing in a pretty, white dress dotted with gems and says "Somewhat.", all the while ignoring the painful pangs in her heart. "It fits very well, but I'd have thought Yakov would wait a few more years before bringing forth the never ending love charade."

"What do you mean?" Viktor's smiles shifts, as if she's surprised him. "This song is about familial love. And true love does exist, you know. You just have to be patient, that's all."

"It's interpretable, I suppose, but I always taught about this song like a fairytale – a boy, maybe a prince, whose whole life was a series of disappointments, who meets a girl, maybe a peasant, and he falls in love with her and pledges his loyalty to her." There is a slight chance that the stories her mother told her around the time she learned the song influenced her view on it, but now she cannot envision it any other way. "And I never said it didn't exist – I'm sure it does. It's the forever part that makes me skeptical."

"And the girl doesn't fall in love with the prince?" Viktor asks as he replays the song in his mind and thinks – yes, it fits.

"I don't know. It doesn't say." Zoya shrugs offhandedly, as if the question hadn't haunted her early childhood. (She remembers begging her mother to tell her the ending, but Maria Romanova had just laughed and dried her daughter's tears and told her that there was beauty in wondering. Zoya also remembers replying that there's more beauty in knowing. Now, she's not so sure she agrees with her younger self.)

Viktor hums a little and prepares another question for the black haired teen, but before he can voice it she begins to speak in a frenzy.

"Shnookerdookies! Look, I'm sorry, but I really have to go. Would you mind telling Yuri to meet me at Matryoshka tomorrow? Anytime after three it's fine."

"Sure, but – why?" Viktor watches bewilderedly as she hauls up her school bag.

"I'm not sure when I'll be able to swing by here again, but I still think we should talk about what music he wants so I won't be pressed for time. Thank you!" Zoya waves and backpedals a few steps towards the general direction of the door before she turns around and sprints like hellhounds are yapping and nipping at her heels.

The door barely has time to close before Yuuri is beside him, sweaty but smelling of spices and sugar, as if he's brought all of Japan with him. (Of course he has, It's all there, safely locked inside his heart, a diminutive version of his homeland that he misses every second of every day and night.)

"Was that Zoya Romanova?" Yuuri asks in English, with barely contained excitement.

"Yes." Viktor raises a silver brow. "How did you know?"

Yuuri smiles crookedly and the tips of his ears redden and Viktor is finding it hard to resist kissing him senseless when he acts so endearingly cute.

"Do you remember my pianist friend? The one that wrote me "Yuri! On ice", and that one other piece from before?" Viktor nods in affirmation but sees no obvious parallel. "She was obsessed with her. She must've shown me so many pictures and talked so much about her that I thought for sure I was dreaming when she walked through the door."

"More like Lilia dragged her in." Viktor murmurs, too low for Yuuri to hear. "And what did your pianist friend say about her?"

"She always gushed that she was more than a prodigy – a true genius. She even made me go to a concert, once."

"Oh? And how was it?"

"Magical. Actually, I don't remember much of the people or the music, but I remember feeling like it was magical, like I was a kid again, only this time I was the hero of my story."

"Of course you are." Viktor assures him just as Yuuri's lips stop moving. "You're Katsuki Yuuri, the knight in polished armor and skating blades, and you're mine and you're perfect."

Yuuri smiles brilliantly, an ocean of love in his gaze, and tilts his head towards Viktor's for a feather light kiss.

They're so happy, so blissfully content in the circle of each other's arms, that they don't even care when Yurio calls them gross and whines about PDA and stomachaches and Yakov yells at them to "Get back to training, you unprofessional lazy slobs!".

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* * *

 **Hello again! For those of you who waited for this chapter - I apologize it took so long, but life kind of got in the way. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on it, though, if you've got the time and goodwill. I just went into vacation mode, so fingers crossed I'll get a little time to write. What about you, guys? Any special plans? Also:**

 **Privet - Hello (informal, Russian);**

 **sotto voce - very softly (it's a musical term, Italian, which literally translates to "under the voice").**


	4. Chapter III

**I'm a lazy jerk. And a procrastinating bum. I deserve some horrible, divine punishment, and to have my story unfollowed by you all. (Except you're most probably better persons than I am and it won't have to come to _that_. I hope. Ehem.) I am also very sorry: for the wait and the long-winded AN both. On a slightly different note:**

 **Both the Winter Palace and the Ostrovsky Square can be found in Sankt Petersburg.**

 **Koschei - an evil being who cannot be killed because his soul is hidden separate from his body, meaning "skeleton" in the old Krivichi dialect; _~not that I actually know anything about that dialect, but, you know, in case you're curious;_**

 **Kikimora - female household spirit;**

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 **how pretty your mouth (hurtling insult after insult)**

 _It didn't matter that she fell apart,_

 _It was how she put herself back together._

– _Atticus_

Roses are red, violets are blue, and Yuri Plisetsky has an automatic revulsion towards authority figures.

(Or, that is the turn of phrase he insists on using, because otherwise he feels people don't take it as a universal truth, but as a mere passing fancy born out of spite and a teenager's innate eccentricity. It's not – Yuri will hate, and consequently disobey, orders until his dying breath.)

So it comes as no surprise that by the time he leaves the ice rink, blond hair wet and shoulders drawn up in spite of mind-numbing exhaustion, a nameless God is already drawing a sunset-colored blanket over the cloud-peppered sky. It was to be expected, really, that he'd delay the meeting with his annoying composer.

However, that doesn't mean his colleagues appreciate his predictability as they tiredly trudge after him, trying to appear inconspicuous and failing miserably.

It is not a grand conspiracy by any means – but Mila and her light-haired side-kick, Katya, are in dire need of a manicure (or so they loudly pronounce out of nowhere), and no one polishes the cuticles like the beauty salon across from Matryoshka (they're not _amateurs_ , thank you very much); Viktor somehow seduces Yuuri into posing as tourists, and Georgi has orchestrated an elaborate night out with his fellow skaters at the sea-themed sports bar (and if said bizarre bar happens to be next to the beauty salon that sits quaintly, innocently across from Matryoshka… well; a happy coincidence for all.)

Yuri, for his part, doesn't notice anything amiss. He shoulders his backpack –limited edition in leopard print and the apple of his eye- shouts a goodbye and scrunches his face into the (mostly) fool-proof fangirl repellent scowl he's taken to wearing since his victory at the Grand Prix.

Before, though not quite welcoming, Sankt Petersburg's streets had been bearable; now he receives a medium of two proposals a day and plenty of pointing and staring, which he despises almost as much as hugging strangers and kissing babies.

The whole way to Matryoshka he stomps gracefully and glares at everything in his way, from trashcans to flowering trees to exuberant kindergarteners, but it is more of an elaborate act than natural instinct, since he's put on his earphones. His mood improves so much upon hearing the dulcet tones of a singer lamenting his need for destruction that his eyes crinkle imperceptibly at the corners and he bends down to pet a stray tabby peering up at him frond behind ridiculously big whiskers.

(The gestures sends several young women swooning into the arms of their companions, and even a few boys stumble and careen down to embrace the pleasantly warm asphalt, but Yuri pays them no mind.)

He does, however, wait a beat after opening the restaurant's cherry wood door before stepping inside. (It's still Zoya's fault, but he can –barely- concede that he might not have been completely in the right. He's also glad his grandpa isn't omniscient, because if he'd bore witness to his charge's poor behavior he'd have surely smacked his head in quiet displeasure, and the one thing Yuri can't stomach is disappointing Nikolai.)

It's warmer inside, and the delicious smells wafting around make his stomach growl like some mythical great beast, loud enough that a few patrons turn around to stare. Yuri glares dismissively at them, and then searches for the pianist with bright blue eyes. He spots her easily, a petite figure hunched over a textbook at a table tucked in the far corner.

Just as he steps in her general direction, Zoya's head jerks up and little tendrils of hair escape her loosely woven braid. Above the heads of the others customers, their eyes meet; it's like there's a string between them, sizzling like lightning and crackling like thunder, and Yuri cannot help himself – he lazily raises his left arm in an absent-minded salute, and mentally pats himself on the back when annoyance clouds her features.

Yuri knows he is not the most empathetic of persons, nor the most considerate, but he _does_ pick up the nuances in another's behavior, the things that make one smile and the things that make one flinch. He notices the little things, but pretends not to because - it's easier, saying you don't care, when the people around you never expect it of you anyways.

The telltale signs of irritation, however, have always been a balm to his soul, the strings he pulls to make others his puppets.

It's these strings that he pulls as he approaches Zoya as one would a rabid wildcat, his smirk widening with every step. Yuri debates between a slight detour to the bathroom and a condescending wisecrack as a conversation-opener (he's got a thousand and seven hanging on the roof of his mouth, ready to tumble out with his next exhale), but before he can do either a body barrels into his legs and a napkin is enthusiastically shoved into his face.

The napkin, stained with apple juice and rimmed with crumbs, stops its descent somewhere near his navel, before it flutters again below his chin as a child bounces up and down in excitement, a small hand scrunching his T-shirt into a fist for balance.

"You're Yuri Plisetsky, aren't you, aren't you?"

Yuri gazes down into the little girl's hazel eyes, her smile blinding and besotted, and he swears her pupils are actual love-hearts; his nose twitches in terror and he backtracks a little, but the diminutive menace follows promptly, like she's glued herself to his side and fused together their shadows.

Yuri looks around in desperation, at the other patrons, smiling indulgently as if to say "There's a good lad", at the girl's parents, situated a few tables away, at the girl herself, dreams and stars twinkling in her eyes for everyone to see, a world of hope in her gap-toothed grin.

Yuri surveys the room again and ignores the surprisingly forceful tugs on his shirt, this time in dawning terror as his vision snags on the child's father, a big, burly man with bulging biceps and rippling muscles, tattooed to his neck and sporting a potentially dangerous grimace, and then on Zoya, who smiles like the Cheshire-Cat and plots his downfall.

As Zoya steps forward, slow and deliberate and sinuous, Yuri steels his spine and thinks _I'm drowning in a deep, unending sea of shit._

 _(But I'll be damned if she's the one getting on a lifeboat.)_

* * *

Zoya smirks with devilish delight as a deer-in-the-headlights-of-a-monster-truck expression adorns her blond nemesis' face. If it were anyone else, she'd flinch and cringe on their behalf and stage an intervention.

For him, though? The boy who, bold and brash, drew heart's blood with jaded words over scars that hadn't yet healed?

 _Hah. As if._

The little girl is still jumping (now in circles around Yuri), chattering excitedly and clutching the napkin to her bosom so tightly, it's as if she fears it will grow paper wings and fly right out of her hands. Her mouth is moving faster than Zoya can follow, but it's alright, because she only repeats "Yuri" again and again in an exalted tone, like she'll never tire of the sound of his name rolling off her tongue in high squeals.

Zoya can't say she sees the appeal, but she certainly senses the opportunity (especially since a group of girls are now eyeing Yuri with predator-like stillness, their eyes following his throat as he swallows drily under the watchful eye of the girl's father).

"Of course he's Yuri Plisetsky!" Zoya says pleasantly and only smiles wider when Yuri glares murderously at her.

The little girl stops suddenly, her fluffy, lopsided pigtails bouncing in a halo around her head. She must see some authority in Zoya's face, for she abruptly latches onto her knees with an iron grip, begging all the while "Oh please please please can I have an autograph please please please?".

Zoya can't feel a thing below her knees (and suddenly "throttling" love inspires a whole new meaning), but she pats the girl's head gently and winks conspiratorially at her.

"Sure you can. But it'd be such a shame not to take a photo, when he's right here and you're dressed so prettily." Zoya sighs in profound sadness and her shoulders droop under the enormity of the conundrum in front of her.

The girl's head bobs in agreement and she repeats faintly, caught in a cobweb of daydreams and fantasies "Yeah. Such a shame…"

She shakes her head so vigorously, Zoya almost expects it to disengage with her neck, and looks at her father decisively, lips set into a preemptive pout.

"I want a photo!"

Her father smiles indulgently and suddenly there's a phone in his right hand, a camera in his left, and Yuri feels like throttling Zoya, damn decorum and double damn serving time in prison. (He hates dark green with a burning passion, but wearing it is a concession he's entirely too happy to make in this case.)

"Look, kid" Yuri begins and when the father somehow senses he's about to crush his little one's dream to pieces, glaring at him, Yuri's anger flares up and instead of faltering, he takes a step closer, trying to make the most out of his measly height and slender build.

"He'll be delighted to comply!" Zoya cuts him off and tries to convey with her eyes that _you unfathomable idiot, you're digging yourself in deeper and so help me, if you start a fight in here, I'll castrate you with a rusty crowbar._

Either Zoya's eyes are uncommonly expressive or the voice of his conscience (the one that sounds suspiciously like Yakov) must have penetrated the thickness of his skull, because he flinches but stubbornly retains his turquoise hued glare.

Zoya, now profusely wishing she'd sometimes think before she opens her big, big mouth, puts her hand on Yuri's chest, fingers digging an unspoken warning in his flesh as she hisses "Won't you, Goldilocks?" She also plants her heel into Yuri's sneaker as an extra cautionary movement, but her proximity only irritates him further.

"Of course." Yuri smiles thinly, a vein pulsating hazardously fast on his temple "Anything for my fans." He flicks Zoya's hand off his T-shirt and raises a mocking eyebrow at her. "Don't you have any dishes to wash or tables to clear? I'm sure you're not paid for small talk."

Zoya, dressed in jeans and a silky, long-sleeved shirt that bears no resemblance to her uniform, feels her fingers tingle with the urge to punch Yuri. She –barely- controls the impulse, throwing him a scathing look, like he's so much less than the dust beneath her shoes.

She steps outside of the frame when the tattooed father makes a frenzied kind of shooing motion, his brown Mohawk quivering with the same rhythm, but not before sweetly suggesting "Why don't you kiss him, devushka? See if you can turn him into a prince?"

A strange light dawns upon the child's face as she looks Yuri up and down, the glint in her eyes distinctly contemplative.

"No!" Yuri bursts out, fists clenching and unclenching manically by his sides. "This is where I draw the line, kid! Nobody is kissing anybody!"

Zoya presses the heel of one hand into her forehead even as she uses the other to steal fries out of Anya's plate, her co-worker having slithered unnoticed through the tables to enjoy the show from a better seat.

"You mean to tell me you'll destroy my daughter's greatest wish as if it doesn't matter?" The father growls gravelly, arms crossed over his massive chest.

"Yes." Yuri grinds out. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

The other patrons –having eavesdropped- wince at large, as if afflicted by some spontaneous disease, and for a moment the only sound is that of chairs scraping surreptitiously across the wooden floor and Zoya's resigned mutter of "moron".

But then the precarious silence is shattered by the little girl's pitiful sobs, around which she wails "Daddy, why don't I matter? I want to matter!", and her father's enraged bellow of "What did you say, you tiny, girly piece of – ", which he doesn't get to finish, because Yuri fixates on the words _tiny_ and _girly_ as a hunting dog on a fresh trail and punches the overly-ripped man right in the stomach.

It's not that Yuri expects the man to fall to the floor in the throes of agony (it would have been greatly appreciated, though), but surely his perfectly-timed hit merits more than a mock eyebrow and a monotone "That tickles."

Now beyond angry, his eyes thunderstorms, Yuri lunges towards the man, all lanky limbs and pointy elbows. So bent is he on inflicting the utmost damage possible, he doesn't notice Zoya move, only feels her silken clad arms encircle his waist, her warm breath on his nape as she lowly speaks of a far-off future in which his spawn has no chance of polluting the world.

But the little girl, not to be outdone, kicks Yuri in the shins with vicious force under the approving glare of her father. This, coupled with the momentum from before, makes both teenagers stagger backwards like drunken penguins, into tables and unsuspecting clients.

Above the symphony of clattering silverware and breaking glasses rises a gruff, foreboding voice "What. Exactly. Is. Happening. Here?!" The owner, Mr. Antonov, spits out the words like they're coals burning his tongue, his left eye twitching under a frowning brow.

* * *

In the end, the little girl gets her photo and a consolatory autograph, signed in fuchsia marker on her forearm by a scowling Yuri (who eagerly awaits the explanations her father will have to give when her "tattoo" fades), banished outside while Mr. Antonov has words with a blank-faced Zoya. She'd glared at Yuri and told him to wait, but other than that her face was a white canvas, wiped clean of color and expression.

Fury is still simmering in Yuri's veins and his vision flashes poppy-red every time he thinks of them, that gangster playing pretend and that spoiled kid with her annoying whining and her droopy pigtails and that mother, distant and uncaring like the moon and – and God, can he never catch a break?

 _I don't care about notoriety_ , Yuri feels like screaming from the rooftops of the Winter Palace, _or about the fans who don't know a Salchow from a Lutz, so why can't they take their fake gushing and lying support away and leave me the hell alone?!"_

(All he's ever wanted? It's not grand hotels or trips to foreign countries which he's too tired to enjoy or a fanbase so big as to fill the entire Ostrovsky Square, it's this: the sharp bite of winter in his nose, silence and cold around him, lights above and ice as long as the eye can see below, his grandfather somewhere to his right as he lounges on the highest step of the podium –finally, the tallest of them all- and the sweet music of Russia's national hymn blaring from the speakers.)

He has half a mind to leave, but if not today, then tomorrow or the day after, and he'll still have to see the godforsaken girl again, and he'd rather avoid any other occurrences such as this. So Yuri waits and bored, burrows his nose into his phone for lack of anything to do. (He doesn't see the pictures or the comments in front of him, he can't bring himself to care.)

He's in the process of shrugging into a hoodie (pitch-black with silvery claw marks on the back) when a girl approaches him, bold and brash and her pouty mouth curled into a smile, like she knows something he doesn't. She's pretty, he supposes, with golden hair and rummy eyes, but he forgets her face between a heartbeat and the next, her features a blur he has no intention of rectifying.

Yuri clears the path, thinking the girl wants to hurry through the narrow footway, but she surprises him by stopping right in his personal bubble (space he guards like a treasure). His fair brows plunge to rest in a deep frown as she clamps her hand onto his wrist in a vice-like grip that makes Yuri think of tentacles and deep, blue seas.

"The hell are you-"

"What about me?" She whispers impishly, a playful dimple making an appearance. "Don't I get to kiss my Prince Charming?"

Yuri scoffs and wants to say "Sure, as soon as you find him, because it sure as hell isn't me", but he doesn't get past the first word (and, in retrospective, maybe he shouldn't have started his answer with an agreement) because the girl rises on tiptoe and smacks her lips to his'.

Her lips are slippery with gloss and she tastes like manufactured cherries, and it's awful, because his phone is crushed between their chests and his eyes are still open and, shit, he doesn't even like cherries, he doesn't _know_ her and who the hell grabs a stranger by their collar and plants one on their unsuspecting lips?

Yuri pushes the girl at the shoulders as she sighs blissfully against his mouth, trying in vain to disentangle her from him, and it is now that the girl's boyfriends arrives at the scene and wrenches Yuri away, his lips rosy-pink and suspiciously shimmery.

(Yuri distantly wonders if it is his low attendance in church that makes God so displeased with him as of late.)

"What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing with my girl, you-" The boy rages, spit flying to braid in Yuri's hair ( _of course_ the bastard had to be tall, _of-fucking-course_ ).

"Me? I'm not the one kissing random people on the street!" Yuri accuses, bruised lips pressed thin with fury.

"Oh, so now you're accusing my girlfriend? Is that what you're doing?" He grabs Yuri by the front of his shirt and jerks him up until their noses are touching in a distinctly uncomfortable closeness, the skater's sneakers barely touching the pavement.

"Yes!" The girl chimes timidly from a few steps away, fingers laced over her stomach. "He just came to me and- oh, it's too horrible, I don't even want to think about it, let's go, I don't – "

But Yuri will never find out what she want (it's just as well, she doesn't, either), because the boyfriend drives his fist into Yuri's nose and a loud crunch assaults his ears, white, hot pain slicing into his flesh like the caress of a blade.

The girl shouts, Yuri knees the other boy in the family jewels in a move he will later defend as reflexive, and Mr. Antonov steps outside, Zoya shadowing his steps like a willowy wraith, and shouts "You again?!" in a tone so harsh as to break glass.

* * *

"You have a right talent, Goldilocks." Zoya is somewhat impressed (but mostly annoyed).

"It wasn't my fault." Yuri mutters and crosses his arms and kicks his legs like the petulant over-grown child that he (denies) he is, pressing a handkerchief to the lower half of his face in a valiant try to staunch the bleeding.

He is sat on a wobbly chair in a relatively scuttle-free corner of the kitchen, the staff throwing him looks varying from pitying to dismayed to amused, while Zoya holds a small towel under the tap and wrings the excess water out of it with perhaps much more enthusiasm than the situation warrants.

"What'd that towel ever do to you?" Yuri asks around a split lip, because the silence is getting too heavy and he feels like he's drowning in all the words that go unspoken.

"Nothing, I'm just imagining it's your neck." The cloth is wet enough now, but still she twists and twists until the water is ice-cold and she can't feel her fingers anymore.

"What'd _I_ ever do to you?" Yuri asks, and it's his tone that does it: derisive, like he couldn't possibly care _less_ for the feelings of the girl with blue eyes he's just met, and snotty, too, as if she should be happy he's allowing her to bask in the glorious light of his attention.

(She blows her top.)

Zoya twists around in a flash, her braid swishing through the air like a whip, and Yuri's ire rises in concert with hers.

"I really, _really_ hope that's a rhetorical question." Zoya's voice is calm even as she seethes in silence, skin drawn tight over her cheekbones and nails biting crescent moons in the soft flesh of her palms.

"What?" Yuri scoffs heatedly as he straightens from his slouch, blue-and-green eyes afire.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you poor, deprived child." She mocks in a sugary voice "Rhetorical means that – "

"I know what it means!" Yuri explodes as he jumps to his feet, the chair clattering unsteadily behind him. "What I don't understand is why you're so freaking angry at me, when I'm the one with the broken nose!"

"It's not broken, you big, odious baby." She pushes him back onto the chair. "Now stay still, shut up, and let me work my magic."

Yuri snorts, which is a natural response as much as an unwise course of action, more shiny droplets of blood gushing out in a steady stream that stops just above his lip.

"How do you know it's not broken?" His question is one quarter of a part curiosity, but mostly him seeking a distraction from pain.

"It might hurt now, but you'd be howling in pain if it were." Zoya doesn't really sound as if she'd mind, though. "Besides, it looks pretty straight to me."

She nudges his legs further apart – or tries to, anyway, but Yuri doesn't budge, either because he doesn't catch the drift, or thinks it some ritualistic power play between genders.

"Oi!" He nudges back but applies much more force, catching Zoya in the shin. "Didn't your mother teach you not to kick a man when he's down?"

Zoya's vision is washed in red as she briefly contemplates homicide.

"Man? I only see a puny, loud-mouthed punk who's all too eager to meet his Maker." She's snarling like some ancient Fury, and Yuri almost sees steam coming out of her ears to curl in wisps around his throat.

"Puny?!" His strangled exclamation is not quite a testimony to his manliness. "Why, you little – "

Zoya balls up the towel and pushes it into Yuri's mouth midshout.

"Shut _up_ , you walking monument of human folly, if the damned demon hears us I'm going to – "

"Oh?" A saccharine voice asks from behind them. "Are you causing" – cue theatrical gasp – "trouble, Kikimora?"

Zoya immediately straightens and flashes Yuri a warning look; waves crash in the sea of his eyes as his glare intensifies twofold.

"Of course not!" Zoya surreptitiously retrieves the cloth and gives the Cook's right hand her knockout smile over the shoulder.

Sadly, he does not drop to his knees in frenzied adoration.

"What, precisely, are you doing to that poor boy?" The demon-that-doesn't-look-like-a-demon drawls as he crosses his arms, hip comfortably braced on the edge of a counter.

His white, flamboyant hat sits lopsided atop a mop of golden hair, little tendrils obscuring eyes of stormy grey. He is young and beautiful, an Adonis with skin of honey and voice like a song – but his nose is proud, his heart prouder, and his smile curves like a scythe.

He and Zoya get along like a house on fire. (Screams, pain, and the ever-present possibility of someone being asphyxiated.)

"Nursing him back to health, naturally."

"You're doing a piss poor job, then. When somebody's bleeding, you're supposed to keep them awake, not take painstaking measures to bore them into a coma."

They're sizing each other up, a short-fused panther and a laconic lion, and Yuri would be content to sit idle and be entertained, he really would, if not for the wetness on his face, the smell of copper in the air.

"Can't you postpone the see-whose-dick-is-bigger contest until I'm not on my deathbed?" Yuri half-raises a hand to capture their attention, sarcasm dripping off of every word.

He is mostly ignored.

"Well? What are you waiting for, young Kikimora? Does blood make you squeamish?" The older boy's eyes are glinting gunmetal grey with enjoyment.

"No, just thought I'd get the froth out of the way first." Zoya says primly.

The Chef gives a low laugh, and Zoya thinks it is almost musical, entrancing, if you can ignore the meanness behind it. Yuri, not to be deterred, kicks Zoya in the other shin and, in retaliation, she pinches the soft skin of the juncture where his neck curves into shoulder.

"You should learn to respect your elders." He picks up an imaginary piece of lint from his off-white coat.

"I prefer to respect my betters." Zoya turns to face Yuri once more, but her blue orbs see nothing of what lies before her. "Go stir some cauldrons, Koschei."

"I have no clients to poison, seeing as you've managed to run them all out, Kikimora." Upon those sneering words he departs, the smell of spices and herbs cloaking him in a culinary shield.

"Vile demon." Zoya sticks her tongue out and the Adonis look-alike, guided by instinct or something else divine, flips her the bird without breaking his stride.

Zoya looks down at Yuri, and her eyes soften somewhat when she sees the mess on his face.

"Now be a dear and splay your legs so I have better access." Zoya says absentmindedly, twisting the cloth around her hand for a better grip.

Yuri's eyebrows soar high on his forehead.

"Isn't that a little forward?"

By the look in his blue and green eyes, Zoya knows he's got her. (They're shining like the eyes of the cat who both ate the canary and got the cream and lived to tell the tale.) Problem is, she's not entirely sure _what_ he's got.

"I don't usually put out on the first date, but if you ask again –nicely- maybe I can make an excep – "

Zoya slaps her hand over Yuri's mouth, cheeks burning bright.

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, pervert. _Don't you dare."_

Yuri's laughter is muffled, but she can feel it vibrating between her fingers, chuckles tumbling out from between his lips to stick to the skin of her palm. (Zoya has the sudden urge to catch it like she would a butterfly, put it in a jar and poke it for repetition – it's so surprisingly melodious.)

Zoya retracts her hand and it comes away smeared with blood. Scrunching her nose, she wipes it off with the towel and advances on until her knees hit the chair's frame.

"Hold still." She warns, blush receding, but her hands when they touch him are gentle.

She catches Yuri's chin between her thumb and pointer, but her skin is smooth and her grip so delicate, he's barely feeling it, and she tilts his face upward. The cloth is warmer now from their – Zoya's – dallying, but it's still cold enough to soothe his hurt.

Zoya is concentrated on wiping the blood off, and Yuri suspects she's trying to make it as painless as possible, but he doesn't have anything better to do than inhaling and exhaling and doing his best impression of a statue, so he finds himself analyzing her features.

It's the first instance he's taken the time to since he met her, and – she's pretty. _Very pretty,_ he amends as she bends closer, their breaths mingling together. It wouldn't be so disconcerting, Zoya's appearance, if not for the fact that they are so close he can count her individual lashes and see the tiny bursts of golden in her irises, if not for the brittle silence that stretches between them like a minefield.

He doesn't remember being in such close quarters with a female before – his mother, perhaps, when he'd been a squealing, ill-tempered babe, maybe a hurried commuter on a packed bus, some nameless girl, either in front or behind him at a queue.

It is – strange, and disconcerting, and Yuri is caught halfway between leaning closer and yanking back. He's never been more aware of his blood flowing through spidery veins and throbbing in his temples – come to think of it, Yuri doesn't remember ever being still enough to listen to his heartbeat.

But now? Oh, now it's beating so fast he's afraid she's going to hear it, going all _thump-thump-thump_ on him in a jagged rhythm that cannot possibly be healthy for absolutely no reason; none at all.

He's always had trouble keeping still (he learned how to crawl abnormally fast, long before babies transcend into toddlers, and he never once stopped), but never has his body acted so strongly against him. His arms, the freaking traitors, are tense, a step away from jerking, and his lungs don't seem to work properly, either shrinking or expanding in a ploy to keep him lightheaded.

It's all Zoya's fault, Yuri decides as she shifts, her legs brushing against the insides of his thighs, her hand cupping his jaw in a feather light grip. He'd think she was a ghost, too, if not for her coldness– she is so frigid that her touch actually _burns_ , and Yuri perceives her as a living, breathing sculpture of ice.

Her perfume is teasing his nostrils – some flowery shit that has no business smelling as good as it does – and Yuri finds it harder and harder to keep his features lax, to keep his hands pliant and awkward in his lap.

After what feels like an eternity, but is probably just a few minutes, Zoya straightens and mutters "All clean.", walking away on legs that look unfairly wobble-free.

Yuri heaves a sigh and throws back his head, shoulders sagging as he slumps on his seat.

To the world at large, he seems beautiful and a little bored, taxed after living through a horrendous ordeal, a boy of ice and marble and molten honey.

He is, in fact, wondering if the Germans have a word for what he is feeling.

(Yuri cannot name it, cannot even begin to describe it, but they have such oddly specific words he feels a sudden urgency to check a dictionary.)

* * *

They step outside into the Russian night, the cold breeze ruffling their locks like an old friend.

Zoya is scrutinizing Yuri with eyes that glow like gemstones, and he is pretending to be unaffected by her blatant staring as he closes the restaurant's door carefully behind him – the same door he's kicked open moments before, so that he could hold it open for her.

So that she could exit before him without sullying her hands on the doorknob.

(Zoya is at a loss.)

"What?" demands Yuri with a scowl, arms crossed defensively against his chest.

Zoya blinks once, twice in honest astonishment, then –

"What do you know?" she drawls "Chivalry isn't dead yet."

A smirk tugs at her lips, expanding as she spies a blush blooming on the porcelain of his cheeks, crinkling the corners of her eyes as Yuri mutters a defensive _shaddap_.

"It's dark." Yuri states as his gaze rests upon a cluster of stars, glowing like candles on a background of velvet.

"How astute."

Yuri throws her a dignified glare over his shoulder, but his eyes catch on her hands, rubbing together for warmth.

"I'll walk you home." He says with an air of long-suffering that teenagers had long mastered into an art.

Zoya barks out a laugh, turning an incredulous stare towards him.

"You just assaulted a girl and you want me to let you walk me home at night?"

"I did _not_ assault her!" Yuri's eyes are burning like coals, his hands curled into loose fists by his sides.

"What, she just jumped your bones for shits and giggles?"

"Yes!" he hisses with impatience. "She was probably one of my fangirls – they spring up everywhere like mushrooms after rain!"

Oh. _Oh._

Zoya hears the desperation behind his words, the feeling of helplessness, and lowers her eyelashes so he can't read the sympathy glowing in her eyes. (She has the feeling he probably wouldn't appreciate it – but that's fair; she hadn't, either.)

"I didn't know that many girls were interested in competitive ice skating." Zoya says finally because she's comfortable with awkward silences only as long as she causes them.

"They're not." Yuri scoffs, and Zoya thinks it bitter, and frankly too old for someone their age.

"Well." she says, scrambling for a kind word in all her thesaurus of idioms and expressions. "Well, that's very unfortunate."

"How astute." He parrots her and raises his eyebrows, satisfaction rolling off of him in waves.

 _Touch_ _é._

"Thank you for the offer, then." Zoya says not quite kindly "But I think I'll manage. I don't live that far away."

"Don't be stupid. There might be creeps lurking about."

"There _are_ creeps lurking about at all hours – they're not McDonald's employees, they don't exactly work in shifts, nor do they feel the need to inform possible victims of their schedules." She corrects. "And suppose a deviant comes about – what can you possibly do about that?" Skepticism floats around her like a cloud.

"A whole lot better than you." Yuri pokes her in the shoulder. "What're you made off, fudge?"

"Sugar and the dreams of others, actually." Zoya responds promptly, only a bit irked.

"Don't forget the cyanide." He pinches her shoulder, as if amazed by the softness and utter absence of muscles.

"It's been fun." Zoya's voice is as dry as the Sahara in mid-August. "But I've really got to get going, so – see you!" She flicks his hand off and steps onto the zebra crossing -

-Or would have, if Yuri's hand hadn't clamped onto her braid to yank her back just as a mastodon of a truck zoomed past in a hurry, horns strangely silent.

Zoya is frozen, her blue eyes the size of dinner plates, her back plastered to Yuri's chest, his forearm digging into her collarbones the only thing keeping her upright.

She trembles, her breath coming in jerky gasps, and feels Yuri's cheek press to hers as if from far away, like she is a spectator in her own body.

"Now, will you let me walk you home?"

Zoya only just manages a tiny nod.

* * *

Five minutes of walking side by side later, and Zoya is still seeing her life flash before her eyes. (She's trying to convert the seconds of terror into nightmares, and comes up with much more sleepless nights than she can spare.)

Her limbs are still shaking, either from shock or cold (her jacket lies forgotten on her bed), and it's a good thing the path to her home is ingrained deep into her conscious, because she's working on auto-pilot, waiting for the mortification to sink in.

(Hopefully, when it inevitably does, she won't be anywhere near a moving vehicle. Or a zebra crossing, which she's starting to distrust.)

Zoya is, understandably, buried in her thoughts so she doesn't see Yuri sneaking glances at her, lips pressed thin with something resembling worry.

He sighs loudly, but it is only after he throws his (new, shiny, second favorite) jacket at Zoya's chest that she lifts her gaze from her feet, abandoning the poor impersonation of a lost ostrich.

"Wha-"

Zoya's eyes are too wide, pupils round pools of darkness – a little bewildered, a little confused, as if someone scrambled her brain and made her forget what she'd been doing; Yuri is thrown for a loop – he can deal with a prissy spitfire (heck, he prefers it, it's like talking to himself), but a frail thing, frightened into silence?

He'll take the insults everyday – that is, after all, the language of his choosing.

"Your shivering is getting on my nerves."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to inconvenience you with my near-death experience." Her tone isn't half as biting as it could be, but she slips the jacket on and murmurs a grudging thank you, warmth enveloping her in seconds.

Yuri nods his welcome and quips – "Don't be, it was the highlight of my day."

"I can't decide if mine was the smitten kid or the busted nose." Zoya points to said abused appendage, swollen to twice its usual size.

"Don't make me take my jacket back." Yuri grumbles, but his words don't ring as harsh, either, and Zoya thinks she understand what he's trying to do.

She won't go so far as to say he's trying to cheer her up – God forbid, no – but maybe, in his own way, he's trying to keep her away from her own nebulous musings, and she cannot but appreciate the gesture.

Even if it comes with a flare of irritation and insults to boot.

"You can't. It'd be too ungentlemanly, and you don't have such a stellar personality to afford points being taken off."

"Pfft. My gentleman side only comes out in the company of ladies."

Instead of rising to the bait, Zoya jabs her elbow into Yuri's stomach, taking only a second to marvel at the hardness she encounters; she takes his painful and sudden exhalation sounds as a due victory cry.

"You didn't have to prove my point so eloquently." He says while rubbing his belly through his T-shirt.

"Actually, I was testing your ability to defend yourself, should we encounter a creep. You are woefully unprepared."

"Yeah? And I suppose you're a ninja in disguise?"

Yuri bites the words out and on his tongue Russian seems rougher, sharper, but he stopped spitting them out as if they were poison in his mouth a few replies ago, and she hears the shift in the conversation. (Zoya wonders if he's enjoying himself, if he has someone other to trade barbs with.)

"Not to brag or anything, but I'm an _Immortal_ in Civ5."

Yuri draws up short and catches Zoya's – well, his jacket's, really – sleeve, mindless of the pedestrians milling around.

"You play Civilization?"

Zoya blinks owlishly at him, not quite following.

"Do you?"

And the rest of their walk is spent like this, talking heroes of old and battle strategies, favorite leaders and despised enemies.

(Zoya knows she should be asking Yuri about his programs, the stories he wants to tell and the soundtrack that goes with them, but she can't bring herself to shatter the uneasy truce between them – because this _is_ very much an unspoken truce, more of a conscious choice to abandon remarks of the incredibly crude and terribly malicious kind than a sudden desire to strike up a friendship.)

By the time they reach Zoya's house, night has well and truly fallen, the late hour emptying the streets. Zoya looks at the sky, and with his jacket too big on her and the moonlight shrouding her in mist and silver, Yuri thinks she looks impossibly sad- or impossibly lonely.

"I wish they would shine brighter." She whispers to herself.

(He hears, and is compelled to answer.)

"They do, but never in the city."

This is the only exchange of words with no ulterior motives, no dodging words like knives and avenging one's honor. It's nice, the absence of double meanings and insults hidden behind pleasantries – but it strikes them both that it sounds awfully romantic.

(Thank God there's no one around to hear.)

Blushing, fumbling, out of his depth, Yuri tries to regain his footing by appealing to Zoya's snarky side.

"Oi, you done gaping at air? I'd like to get home sometime this century." He taps his foot for emphasis.

"Yeah, yeah, don't get your panties in a twist."

Zoya disrobes, and when she hands him the jacket their fingers touch, his cold, hers warm, skin sliding carelessly over skin.

An accidental touch. They both retract their hands, not too quickly, but not slowly, either. It is – normal.

(Perfectly normal. Only – her warmth lingers.)

Yuri slips into the black jacket and it makes his mop of light hair stand out, like a crown of stars sat atop a handsome ghost. He backs into the illuminated street, his shadow curling by his feet like a giant cat, with an unenthusiastic "See ya" and a hand raised in farewell.

He manages only a few steps before her voice stops him.

"Yuri." Quieter, then, like a promise drowned by the chilly wind. "…Thank you."

"Don't mention it." He keep on walking, hands burrowed deep into his pockets for warmth.

"Never again." Zoya promises, entering her house.

Yuri chuckles lightly, shaking his head as if to clear it, and idly wonders if she's watching his silhouette get swallowed by the darkness.

(She is not – because she is not that corny, because he hasn't come to mean anything significant to her yet, but mostly because her floors are a mess of junk food and littered bottles, the acrid smell of alcohol clinging to the air.

Zoya drops to her knees and starts cleaning.)

* * *

Hidden behind one of Zoya's neighbor's evergreen bushes, they are lying in wait like a twosome of burglars – the others have long gone home, snickering behind closed fists like schoolchildren.

(Yuuri bears the indignity of it with a sigh on his lips and a smile in his heart.)

"Oh, they're simply adorable!" Gushes a giddy Viktor, hands clasped under his chin in obvious delight while he watches Yurio's departing form.

"But Viktor – " ventures a much calmer Yuuri " – they didn't really do anything."

"It's not about what they _did_ , Piglet mine, but about what they will _do._ " The older man flutters his hands in a tornado of movement, then thinks better and grasps his fiancé's hands in his, leaning back slightly to initiate a swooping twirl – Yuuri would term it congratulatory, if only they had anything to celebrate.

"Viktor, he just walked her home, I don't think – "

"Shh, love" – and oh, do Yuuri's legs get weaker when he calls him this – "don't burst my bubble."

Truth be told, Yuuri's not sure anyone can change Viktor's mind after he's made it up – he is as mule-headed as he is pretty – but he's not about to tell him _that_.

"Why do you want so desperately for something to spring up between them?" It's not that Yuuri doesn't want Yurio to fall in love – he does, he really does, because it's the most beautiful, empowering emotion to experience, but he's also sure it should be Yurio's decision alone – and Zoya's, if it comes to that.

Even if Viktor as a cheerleader paints a very, very tempting mental image.

"But don't you see? Can't you feel the fresh scent of possibilities in the air?" He turns incredulous eyes towards Yuuri, blue as forget-me-nots and pale winter mornings. "This is already a beginning – and what a good one, too! Much better than ours."

"Better than you traveling half a world to see me?" Granted, a walk under the moonlight makes for a pretty memory, but it pales in comparison to Viktor's grand gesture.

"Piglet, we met at the Grand Prix banquet when you were wasted on _champagne_ of all things and I was gulping my way to the mother of all drinking bouts. You don't even remember it!" Viktor accuses jokingly, pointer flicking his lover's nose.

"W-w-well, all the better, isn't it? I'll always remember our first meeting as being in my home – "

" – Your innocent gaze falling upon my wet and splendid body." Viktor picks up the idea, oblivious to Yuuri's incoherent stammering. Or, well, not oblivious – only enjoying it in quiet.

"Well, I suppose that does make a pretty story for the grandchildren – " Yuuri makes an inhumanely sharp sound, resembling a siren's yowl, so Viktor hastily continues, palms spread in a placating manner " – when they grow up and the ratings don't apply anymore, naturally."

"Viktor, let's just follow Yurio home, alright?" Mumbles Yuuri quietly, as if the fire in his cheeks burned out his voice to a mere rasp.

"Hmm? I suppose you're right, though with that mean kick of his', I wouldn't worry too much."

Viktor rubs his back of phantom pains and Yuuri suppresses a smile even as he wholeheartedly agrees; he distantly wonders where the young prodigy picked it up from, because it doesn't seem like Yakov's style and he's almost certain it has nothing to do with pliés and fouettes.

They walk hand in hand on silent feet, careful to keep Yurio in their field of vision without being seen.

"And after this?" Yuuri asks as his blood thrums with exhilaration.

Viktor squeezes his hand – a brand, a promise.

"Oh, I think we'll manage to entertain ourselves just fine, illicit activities notwithstanding."

His smirk is a little secretive, a little sinful, and it makes bubbles erupt in Yuuri's chest in an explosion of happiness.

He doesn't think life can get any better.

(He's right. It can only go downhill, when you're so up above the sky, tucked somewhere between fluffy clouds and scattered constellations in a cocoon of joyous bliss that is safe and untouchable only in your dreams.)

 **.**

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	5. Chapter IV

**I want it to be noted that I absolutely intended to update before the end of summer, but everytime I sat down to write, something else immediately grabbed my attention. (Like flies. And blood sucking mosquitoes. Also, cracks in the wall. Very interesting stuff, that.) So... have a happy Halloween! Because there's no way I'm updating before _that_ happens. Here, have some Russian words:**

 ** _Dobryj dyen'_** **\- Good day. Fromal-ish;**

 ** _Zdravstvuj_ \- Hello;**

 ** _Ded_ \- Grandfather.**

* * *

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

 **the memory of you (is burned against my mind)**

 _Everybody has a chapter they don't read out loud._

 _-Anonymous_

Russia, in the minutes after dawn, is both spectacular and cold.

Having lived in Sankt Petersburg all her life, Zoya thinks she may be excused if its beauty no longer leaves her reeling, if she has grown immune to chill and ever-winter. It is magnificent, of course, a true feast for the senses, and she is proud to call it _home_ – but because it _is_ , because she can navigate its streets with nary a thought, because when she closes her eyes there is a map stitched across the inside of her eyelids, the enchantment slips its hold on her.

And so, with no spells to root her into place, by the time she arrives at school, Zoya is well and truly lost inside her own head. They are not pretty thoughts, and when her flat gaze makes a preschooler scurry about like Hell's puppies have him marked as a fleshy target, she is dismayed to notice her features have arranged themselves into a frown with her none the wiser.

Zoya smoothes her frown into an absent smile with little effort, like a pendulous artist molding face after face into clay. She even puts an extra spring in her step as she climbs up the stairs, the metal handrail bitingly cold against her skin.

(Someone once told her that if she pretends long enough, she'll get lost among the web of lies she's woven. Though it might not have been intended in this spirit, Zoya is trying – she's trying _so hard_ , but it is to the same reality that she wakes to.)

Zoya goes to her classroom, humming quietly under her breath some catchy tune she's heard on the radio, backpack ramming into her with the rhythm of her footsteps. It's still early so the halls are mostly empty, but she likes slipping into her school persona unhurriedly, like getting into a pool one foot at a time, instead of throwing herself head-first, nutty cannonball-style.

She swings the door open with her hip, but there is no chatter awaiting her, no flying paper planes, no sponge-projectile – there is only sleeping Alyosha, using his bundled jacket as a makeshift pillow, and the smell of dust and chalk tickling her nose.

Zoya huffs out a breath – part exasperation, part amusement – but she makes her footsteps as silent as possible as she approaches her own desk, where she promptly abandons her polka-dotted rucksack. She could revise some of her notes, she could read on her phone or listen to music – but the silence feels so stifling, Zoya decides to brave the cold once more.

But not before she makes a beeline for the coffee machine under the apathetic gaze of other bleary-eyed students, almost tipping the scalding liquid over a few times on her walk back to her class. Zoya places the paper cup in front of Alyosha and flicks his forehead with a sickeningly cheery "Good morning!" – and only then does she bound out to the courtyard.

Once outside her gait is surer, her posture straighter as she makes for a particular spot – a secluded space in one of the corners, where a weeping willow stands vigil over a handful of snowdrops scattered tastefully between upturned tree trunks.

The imagery is splendid now – the willow's branches arch like swan necks underneath early leaves of emerald green, the trunk an abrupt slope that makes the tree look caught up in free-fall, suspended above patches of immaculate snow – but Zoya thinks it will be breathtaking in autumn.

She hums again – another tune, not as cheerful but more genuine, as she parts the curving branches like she would a curtain, and Zoya imagines she's disrupting the flow of a magical waterfall with the briefest, lightest of touches, and for a moment she thinks it's wonder, not blood, that keeps her heart beating.

She even feels something like peace perch atop her shoulder, and if she's twists her fingers _just so_ in the morning light filtered between the leaves, she may even delude herself they're pink and stiff from cold, not bleach and the motion of scrubbing.

The sensation is liberating, smile-inducing and honest to God amazing – until it isn't, a familiar voice breaking the quiet with a metaphorical hammer the size of Thor's, taking the pieces and blowing them to smithereens until the mere notion of tranquility is well and truly disrupted.

(And this day started so well, too, Zoya laments in her secret heart.)

* * *

Yuri just wants a little quiet.

He doesn't care for school, one way or the other – it's just another place to be in whenever he's not on the ice, wasted time which could be much better spent furthering his training if only somebody would _listen_ – but it was his grandfather's wish, so Yuri acquiesces, however begrudgingly.

His classmates, also, pose no interest – a blur of faces he can mostly attribute to names, a few fangirls he takes notice of only to sneer at. He has made himself a study in aloofness and decreed ignoring them an art: a nod here, a grunt there, unapproachable demeanor all around, and he remains largely undisturbed.

But now his head is splitting at the seams with a horrendous migraine and he feels the need to escape their incessant, inconsequential, _inane_ talking, just for a few minutes before he's thrust back into their midst like a blonde lamb sent to slaughter.

But clearly some hot shot in the celestial upstairs has a different agenda, because he sees the willow's thin branches shaking from his seat on one of the trunks, dripping cold droplets of dew all over the place.

Yuri pretends his eyeballs hold lasers as he glares at the emerging hand, pale and delicate and female – alas, it does not combust into flames. Disappointed, he tries composing a tirade, but the pounding of his head doesn't allow for much thinking and the scathing words he conjures fly unbidden from his grasp.

Still, his vocal chords are quivering with indignation and his cheeks are almost bulging from the insults that they're caging. Yuri's mood is, frankly, atrocious – and he's quite prepared to relay that to the next person imposing in his little, timeless sanctuary.

(His leg jitters with anticipation, but it abruptly stops as he recognizes the trespasser, as does the stream of expletives flowing directly to his mouth.)

His composer turned pest upon his _life_ \- never mind society – enters his field of vision slowly, as if she's trying to build a sense of anticipation, as if she has the right to simply invade his vicinity with her sharp gaze and sharper words – and, well, maybe it's within her rights, but – still.

The words leave Yuri's mouth without him noticing, almost of their own accord.

"You again?" He makes _you_ sound like the vilest slander he can think of.

Zoya draws up short and ceases smiling like a lunatic at her hands, and Yuri entertains the idea that it's a fetish of some sort. She rivets her impossibly blue eyes on his' as her lips part on the softest of gasps, and Yuri finds it very hard to associate it with the dull, familiar school grounds.

It is almost surreal – until she opens her mouth and takes it upon herself to upgrade his headache from There-Is-A-Hammer-Drill-Going-Loose-Inside-My-Skull™ to There-Are-Drunk-Mariachis-Having-A-Party-In-My-Brain™.

"Excuse me?" Even if her voice returns, Zoya stands frozen, half-hidden in a great swirl of wet leaves.

"Are you stalking me?" He tries for anger, but manages to grasp only the burnt ashes of an outburst.

(Privately, Yuri thinks he sounds much more tired than he intends, but he cannot help himself – weariness has sunk its claws deep into his bones and it makes him sluggish and the world unclear, like he's underwater, alone at the bottom of the ocean, and every motion is dragged out and ten times more taxing than usual.)

For a moment, Zoya's eyes widen in incredulity, her lips shaping sounds that simply refuse to come out.

"Yes." She answers eventually, all earnest and serious. "You're such an amazing person, I simply couldn't help myself; so I made a friend of mine in the mafia follow you home so he could tell me where you live, and then I blackmailed a retired KGB agent into hacking all the school's websites in Sankt Petersburg, only so I could know where you go to school. Then, I proceeded to search for engagement rings for our eventual wedding – I'm partial to a white-gold Pandora piece, but I'm sure we can work something out – and now I'm here to profess my eternal love to you – "

"Oh, shut up already." Yuri grinds the words through his teeth, his thumb and pointer finger pinching the bridge of his nose in a herculean effort to stop the world from spinning.

"I thought we already established that I don't particularly like you?" She asks archly in a faux-pleasant manner, only half as irritated as she pretends to be.

Yuri sees that she expects an answer just as wintry – it's her stance, one hip cocked and head thrown to the side with wild abandon, the set of her mouth, lips pulled in the beginning of a sneer, that betray her. And – that's fine; he, too, is spoiling for a fight, but try as he might, Yuri cannot formulate a response.

His head his throbbing and nausea is taking hold of him – he's woken like this, sore and feverish and tired, and for fear of not being able to hold anything down he hasn't eaten, and his stomach punctuates its displeasure with sudden flashes of pain and rueful yowls.

Yuri resents not being able to rise to the challenge, not mustering enough fire in his gaze to glare, but mostly he resents her – the girl who popped up out of nowhere and disrupted his life, the girl whose voice is sharp even as her hands are gentle, the girl who is currently seeing him at his weakest.

He settles on a diplomatic response – or, as civil as he can make it. Yuri grunts and tilts his head to the skies, arms crossed and nails biting down on his biceps through his blouse in a futile attempt to take his mind off his headache – he's read somewhere that you can choose which pain to concentrate on, and at this moment he's ready to try anything just to make it stop.

"Go away." His voice almost, _almost_ breaks.

Zoya frowns and hesitantly gets closer, the thin layer of snow crunching loudly under her boots. Yuri scrunches his eyes shut until pretty lights are dancing on the vast blackness of his eyelids, a low growl rising from his chest.

"Didn't you hear me? I said – "

"Are you alright?"

Zoya's sounds (dare he say?) concerned, but also unbearably close – and when did she slip so near him, that her warm breath fans his face, that her knees rest beside his feet on the cold ground? Yuri abruptly wrenches his eyes open only to see endless, vibrant blue, Zoya's eyes peering up at him from under a fringe of thick lashes.

"Huh?" He makes a garbled sound and the worry in her eyes catches him off guard.

"What's wrong?"

Yuri, discomfited, scoffs. "Nothing's wrong, why don't you – "

He breaks off when he feels her ice-cold hand settle on his forehead, the movement lost in his ill-timed blink.

Yuri tells himself he is delirious, his uncharacteristic behavior born out of fever – otherwise, he cannot explain why he doesn't slap her hand away, why, after she clucks her tongue and deems her hand a defunct thermometer, he does nothing more than freeze as Zoya slides her cold, cold hand through the silk of his hair to cup the back of his head, nudging it forward to press her soft lips against his forehead, her neck so close to his nose that her perfume – roses, sandalwood and plums – tickles his nose.

He is stupefied, his muscles locked – all because of the fever, he assures himself.

Zoya settles back on her haunches and presses her lips into a thin line, gazing into his eyes for a long moment.

"You shouldn't be here."

Her words shatter the little bubble of peace between them, and Yuri is – feverish and sick and a hundred other things, none of which can be even remotely described as _disappointed_.

"I'm sorry to inconvenience you with my presence – " He starts out bitterly, but Zoya is quick to shake her head.

"No, idiot, I mean you're clearly sick and you should've stayed home."

"I'm not sick." He insists, wondering in the back of his mind which of them is he really trying to convince. "It's just a headache – it'll pass."

 _It always does, sooner or later._

"It's not just a headache, you're burning up!" Zoya raises her fingers to his crown again, but this time Yuri manages to gather his bearings enough to push them away.

"I think I know better how I feel, considering I'm the one whose head is splitting open." He grouches, sliding further away from her.

"No, really, I think you should at least go to the nurse's office. " Zoya says, but her worry goes over the top of Yuri's head and he only hears condescension.

"I don't need your help."

Zoya rolls her eyes and huffs out a breath, saying "Clearly, you do, so why don't I – "

"I don't _want_ your help." He enunciates it clearly, voice raised but still below a shout.

Something fitters in Zoya's eyes, but it is gone too soon for him to decipher. (He thinks it might be minute hurt, but – how could it be? He hasn't acted differently than he did last night, or even the day before.)

"Fine." She pushes to her feet, voice sharp and eyes hard. "But just so you know, I'm going to identify you as _irremediably and impossibly stupid_ after you freeze to death out here, on the freaking school grounds."

"Will you just go away?" His migraine is intensifying, so he spits the words out like they're arrows, and even though they come out harsher than he means to, he can't be bothered to take them back.

"With pleasure."

Still, Zoya reaches for something in the inside pocket of her jacket and throws it at his feet.

"The hell - ?"

"Ibuprofen. It's supposed to help with headaches, but it also lowers your fever. You're welcome."

She gazes down at him, impossibly immovable and cold, and Yuri suddenly feels little, what with the pale morning sun shining behind Zoya, painting her in a golden light that somehow gentles the planes of her face.

She turns on her heel and slithers between the willow's branches, but this time it is nothing magical – just a girl, a boy, a crying tree standing vigil – and the freshet of wet leaves that separates them.

Zoya doesn't look back, her steps more hurried as the tardy bell rings.

She doesn't see Yuri pick up the medicine, nor does she see him swallow it with the slightest hesitation.

(She also misses the way his face softens in confusion, the way puzzlement brings a sort of sweetness to his features. But – it's alright; there is time enough for this, still. It's not as if they can shake each other off, when there is Lilia and classical music to bind them together with red string.)

* * *

The morning goes on, bleeding into noon, and the number of times Zoya sees Yuri around is simply ridiculous – she passes him by in the hallways, ends up behind him at a queue and almost trips over his legs in the library, when yesterday she hadn't even imagined they could share the same school.

(A week ago, she hadn't even known of his existence – but it's too late to turn back to blissful ignorance, now.)

It's like everywhere Zoya looks, aimlessly or otherwise, Yuri is _there_ , breathing and sneering at nothing in particular, at ghosts or maybe at thin air. Sometimes, their eyes clash above the other milling students and times freezes for a second – but then they look away, turning back to their own devices, and pretend it never happened.

Between the third and fourth period, amidst laughter and pop quizzes, they develop something of a taciturn agreement: their eyes slide over the other like water raining down on river stones, and any sense of familiarity is lost in between a breath and the next. This is school, the only place where they find themselves on equal footing, and they are very careful not to disrupt the balance, lest they tempt fate.

But that's just barely scraping the surface – deep inside, they're tangled, beautiful messes.

(Yuri wants to say he's maybe-sorta sorry and Zoya wishes to absolve him without any fuss – but they don't know how, so they figure they can keep on ignoring each other until one of them breaks and sets the tone of their next interaction.)

It's a shoddy plan – Lilia would never let them get away with this, and besides, Viktor is now _curious_ – and when his senior immerses himself in jigsaws, Yuri usually exchanges Sankt Petersburg for Moscow and lies low until the blonde-haired, sake-loving storm is past.

On further inspection, it's an _incredibly_ shoddy plan, poised to crumble any second and they know it – but they don't actually expect it to burst up in flames mere hours after its concoction.

Or in this particular way.

It stars out innocently enough: it gets to Yuri by word-of-mouth, courtesy of his nosy classmates, that Mrs. Gagarina (the overtly-motherly vice-principal, and also his teacher of history) requires his presence. He waits until the bell rings before complying, and then he lounges, bored and boneless, next to the teachers' room.

When she emerges, clad in pastel tones and peppermint hair twisted up in a bun, Yuri is once again struck by how distinctly grandmotherly she looks. It rubs him wrong, especially when she pins him into place with her grey eyes, owlish and vacant behind her thick spectacles.

"Oh, Yuri! There you are." Mrs. Gagarina smiles like she still believes in fairytales and sparkly unicorns.

Yuri, meanwhile, has no such delusions – he only dregs up enough politeness to tilt his head in a deliberate nod.

"Come, come. Let's talk into my office."

Yuri means to fall into step behind her, but Mrs. Gagarina's hand hovers at the small of his back, a phantom presence that makes him pick up his step to avoid it, all the while gnashing his teeth – he is neither child nor sheep to be – be shepherd to and from by some invisible leash.

(And besides, he has grown unaccustomed to motherly touches. Yuri has no wish no re-experience them, if they are to be stolen once again.)

In front of his teacher's door, there is already one person waiting – Yuri can already recognize her from a distance, the way her black hair spills onto her back like a waterfall of mist and silk, the white column of her throat, those long fingered hands she keeps knitted at her back.

(He absently wonders when his subconscious committed the details to memory. It does not concern him that he did – he is neither blind nor air-headed- but this, the fact that he takes it as a given fact, it makes a spark of worry ignite in his chest.)

Mrs. Gagarina holds the door open for them, and Yuri motions for Zoya to take the lead. She shoots him a surprised look, and Yuri cannot help being disgruntled – so what if he doesn't sprout flowery words of adulation like some long forgotten minstrel? It doesn't make him a barbarian.

(Yuri learned gallantry from his grandfather, and it stayed with him – because everything Nikolai said or did, he soaked up like a sponge.)

Finally, they seat themselves in a triangle of sorts – Mrs. Gagarina, dwarfed behind her massive desk, Zoya and Yuri before her, squirming to get comfortable in chairs that were meant to augment the worry of the student unfortunate enough to be sent into the vice headmistress' office.

Mrs. Gagarina takes a moment to take their measure, gouge their worth – she sees Zoya sitting prim and proper, back straight and empty smile in place, and Yuri, inserting as much distaste into the simple act of resting down as he can manage, and ponders whether she's making the right choice.

"Well, I won't take long, darlings – I know you have classes. I called you here to make arrangements for something I hope will be beneficial to you both."

Zoya takes it as her cue to make the appropriate questioning noise, eyebrows raised in polite perplexity.

"I'm so glad you've asked, Zoya, dear." Mrs. Gagarina turns towards Yuri and her smile fades a little. "Frankly, Yuri, your grades are abysmal."

"No, they're not." Of that he is certain, because he takes care to keep them a most benign average – he can't skate and keep the know-it-all adults in his life off his case, otherwise.

"Abysmal might be a slight exaggeration." She allows, a touch imperviously. "But I've read the reports from your teachers – and Yuri, you can do so much better, if only you'd apply yourself."

"I don't have the time."

And that is true – it takes everything just to keep his life afloat, to juggle tests and homework assignments with step sequences and training and not lose his sanity in the process.

"I know all about your extracurricular activities, Yuri, and while they bring great pride to the school, you shouldn't put your education at risk." She peers disapprovingly above the lens of her glasses, and Yuri hates that she can make him feel like a child with just a look – no one should have that power to lord over him except his mother, and she's never present to exercise it.

"But – "

"No buts, Yuri. There will come a time, you know, when you won't be able to practice the sport that you so love. This is where your schooling comes in – as a secondary option, in case you change your mind or are unable to continue on your preferable path."

"Fine." He allows, thinking it pointless to argue with a senile, old teacher, who has only the barest of authorities over him. She cannot do anything, either way – Yuri pays attention just enough to grasp the foundation of his subjects, enough that his grades remain steady and Yakov cannot object and chain him to the bench.

"But what does she have to do with anything?" He tilts his chin in Zoya's general direction, fair hair sliding feather-light against his cheeks.

"I am ever so glad you asked. Yuri, meet Zoya – your new tutor in everything school-related."

Mrs. Gagarina claps her hands rapidly, before they have any chance to rebel. "It's up to you to decide when and how often you meet, but be sure I'll know if you won't. I expect to see much improvement in your work, Yuri. Now, chop-chop! So much to do, so little time!"

As Mrs. Gagarina cheerfully ushers them out of her office, Zoya wonders how she could have ever dismissed her teacher as harmless.

(Yuri is busy ruing the day he met Zoya, but if he had any attention to spare, he would probably think the same.)

* * *

"Where do you want to do it?" Zoya asks as they walk side by side to their respective classes, a cautious distance between them.

Her words are neither clipped nor pleasant. Yuri checks the space between them, figures she can't move fast enough to throttle him after he opens his mouth, and in true teenagerish fashion, acts like nothing happened.

"Again with the innuendos?"

Yuri keeps one eye on her face, the other on her hands, and so misses entirely the foot she slides in front of him. He stumbles, balances precariously on his toes before his training kicks in, and emerges with ruffled feathers and glaring eyes.

"Be serious. Where do you want to study?" Zoya gazes straight ahead, keeping her pace, and Yuri has to hurry a little to fall back into step with her.

(Or a few centimeters ahead – not that anybody's counting.)

Yuri turns an incredulous stare towards Zoya, and it irks her to no end. "Nowhere. _Duh_."

She sighs through her nose, already feeling a headache building up; and she's all out of analgesics, too.

"You heard Gagarina – if your grades don't improve, she'll keep getting on your case, and after she's through with you, she's going to be getting on _my_ case."

And she really, really cannot afford a teacher's sudden interest in her.

"Figures you'd be one of those." Yuri scoffs and ostensibly looks away, as if the sight of her burns.

"One of what?" She furrows her brows, not at all liking his tone.

"Look, my grades are fine. I'll pay more attention in class or whatever." Yuri means to take the left as the hallway splits into two, but Zoya grasps the hood of his jumper and drags down, pinning him into place.

"One of what?" She repeats, inserting cold steel into her voice.

Yuri breaks free from her feeble hold, his hood slipping from her fingertips like flowing sands. He doesn't answer until they are eye to eye.

"A Goody Two-Shoes incapable of original thought, the kind of teacher's pet who follows orders and barks at command."

He expects Zoya to burst into screams, but she surprises him by rolling her eyes, lips curling into a smile that cuts like a blade flashing under sunshine.

"As opposed to – what? A misunderstood rebel who's trying to outrun a world that's out to get him?"

Yuri leans in and tilts his head, eyes narrowed in consternation as he whispers darkly "You don't know me."

Zoya widens her eyes mockingly. "But you don't know me either."

Yuri smirks, like she lived up to what he's envisioned. "I don't plan to." He swivels on his heel and walks towards his classroom, hands burrowed in the pockets of his jeans.

"We're still going to study together, you know." She adds conversationally, eyes thin slices of sapphire, but Yuri ignores her, his departing form a disdainful dismiss.

Her shoulders droop slightly and she bites her lip, Mrs. Gagarina's words replaying in her head on an endless loop.

Yuri slams the door shut when he reaches his classroom, and Zoya remains a lonely, wavering silhouette in the hallway – just her, and her thoughts.

An hour more and school lets out, Zoya joining the other students as they leave in large groups with new fervor. She says goodbye to her friends, all smiles and hugs and fluttering hands, and continues alone on a shortcut that takes her along a graveyard.

Zoya doesn't care much for the scenery – it gives her cold shivers that creep up her spine and keep the tiny hairs on her arms raised – but it provides solitude, so she ignores the imposing marble crosses and the statues of wailing angels as she dials a number she knows by heart, every digit ringing hollowly inside the cage of her ribs.

" _Dobryj dyen'!*_ How may I help you?" Comes a throaty female voice, made a little tinny by the phone.

" _Zdravstvuj_ , Nina. Is my appointment with my mother still on?" She'd made it two days before, but she can never be too sure when it comes to her mother. Maria Romanova had been a wild, improbable creature even before the disease that stole her mind.

"Ah, Zoyachka, I'm afraid it's not really a good time." Nina's voice sweetens with compassion, and Zoya can almost see her chocolate-brown eyes crinkling kindly at the corners, lips caught between a smile and a grimace.

(She hates it all.)

"When, then?" She is careful not to sound too distraught.

"I don't know. Soon, sweetheart. I'll give you a call as soon as she's cleared, alright?"

"Of course. Thank you, Nina; have a good day."

Zoya pockets her phone and blinks a tad spitefully at the sky, her other hand tightening on the strap of her backpack. It takes her a few minutes before she realizes she's essentially lingering near a place that reeks of death, the only living girl among a sea of bones.

She speeds up towards the center, towards light and noise and a home that is too empty, and never once looks back.

(It would be an admission of weakness, and she is anything but that.)

* * *

Yuri doesn't need many things to be happy. Or rather – it takes the absence of innumerablefactors in his vicinity for him to attain contentment.

Fangirls, for one, kids on crying sprees or sugar highs, angry storms that trap him inside, insipid interviewers who try to pry his secrets open on television and Lilia in one of her frequent moods.

Yuri only knows bliss when any of those things are not happening – or at least not happening at once. But then he usually calls his _ded_ , sometimes to complain, other times to vent, but mostly to hear his voice, his labored, smoker's breathing, and warmth spreads inside his chest and he thinks – yes, yes, that's happiness.

It's this feelings that he's experiencing now as he hangs up with a soft goodnight, and Yuri takes a moment to marvel how a few minutes of speaking with his mother's father about inconsequential things can cheer him up.

(Only a moment, maybe two. If it were more, it would be gushing, and Yuri simply doesn't do that.)

Yuri sits up in bed, the red numbers on his digital clock flashing angrily at him. It's a few minutes past midnight, but he knows he won't be able to fall asleep. Usually, when he's so fatigued he needs toothpicks to prop his eyelids open, it's an easy transition from waking thoughts to silly dreams – his head need only touch a horizontal surface and he's a goner.

But tonight Yuri feels restless, like his blood turned into sugar. His soft comforter holds no temptation. Yuri sighs loudly, contemplating the night sky as he debates whether to call his best –well, only- friend or not. He knows Otabek wouldn't mind, won't even mention the fact that it's completely unlike him, but he cannot quell a twinge of guilt when he remembers the three hour difference between Sankt Petersburg and Almaty.

He starts to count the stars, the game from his childhood he remembers most fondly – even if it _was_ his mother who'd taught it to him after she'd tucked him into bed, peppering his face with bubbly kisses. He finishes much sooner than he did when he was young, and his thoughts stray towards another vexing girl – _"I wish they would shine brighter."_ , which prompts him to think of Mrs. Gagarina, of tests and school and lessons.

Yuri growls low in his throat, loud enough to wake his cat, who lazily blinks up at him and flicks his tail in annoyance. He's just about to poke the kitten's belly, he's so bored, when his phone lights up, buzzing on the nightstand.

Yuri lounges to take it into his hands, grinning when he sees the bold numbers flickering into the dark. He doesn't know what other sense Otabek possesses, but it makes Yuri think twice about his stance on friendship, if it's a general thing.

(It could be unique, for all he knows. He doesn't have enough friends to test the theory.)

"What are you doing awake at this hour?" It's three in the morning in Kazakhstan, and through trial and error Yuri had learned that Otabek was neither morning lark nor night owl – he simply likes to rest as long as he is able.

"I couldn't sleep." Otabek admits gruffly, making Yuri raise his brow – he cannot fathom what thoughts can keep his friends from upholding his ridiculously strict schedule.

(Yuri hates schedules and has an erratic sleeping pattern at best – at worst, he paints his nights in white and draws constellations with his eye on the ceiling until sunlight streams past the curtains to drench his little world. Why Otabek, who is 19 and mostly considered an adult, clings onto an orderly and elaborate timetable is beyond him.)

"Besides, we didn't really speak these last few days." Otabek's voice whisks Yuri out of his musings.

"You said you were busy." Yuri points out, only a tiny bit contrite.

"I was." Yuri rolls his eyes at the Kazakh's predictable lack of following information. "But now I'm not."

Yuri snorts. "Hard to find an occupation at three in the freaking morning."

"Devil's hours, they call it." A touch of humor seeps in. "So what's happened recently? You didn't update your feed."

"I never knew you were my fanboy." Yuri quips to mask his smile, hoping the raven-haired boy can't hear it in his voice.

But it's the opening he didn't know he'd been waiting for – and it's enough to send him into a vicious rant, complete with different voices and original sound track.

Otabek doesn't make sense of it at first – something about a girl-musician, a past child wonder of Russia that had slinked back into obscurity, poison in her veins and insults on her mouth. Slowly, slowly, the plot threads begin to unravel, and he gets the gist of it.

Later, after they hang up (Yuri's chest considerably lighter and Otabek's – not), the older boy ponders the details and the nuances, the things his friends says but doesn't mean, the things he never speaks of but must surely think about.

On a professional level, he is happy for the blond; he doesn't know the daughter but he admires the mother and her music, and if the youngster has only half of the elder's skill with the piano, then Yuri has a fairy godmother indeed.

Personally, though, all Otabek feels is unease. Yuri has never shown such emotion over another person before – and when his voice had wavered over the phone, Otabek had read between the lines.

It ranks. It rattles.

(Otabek doesn't go to sleep until the wee hours of the morning and wakes up even more tired than when he went to bed.)

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	6. Chapter V

**Ohmygawd, I'm such an asshole. This chapter's been in the works for a few months, but I only just got around to wrapping it up. Also, I've been meaning to ask - are such long chapters a drag? 7k words is a helluva lot, but I find it most comfortable to write like this, instead of short, frequent updates.**

 **Anyway, thanks a bunch to everyone who ever read this story, left a review, favourite or follow - and mostly to those who didn't renounce their follows even after I dropped off the face of the Earth. Have a cookie!**

* * *

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 **there's a fire (raging in my soul)**

 _like wine,_

 _the sorrow of past days_

 _is stronger with time_

 _-Alexander Pushkin_

Patience is one of the virtues that Lilia Baranovskaya, former prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, dismisses entirely.

(Why wait, when you have the means to get anything, everything you want, just as Eve plucked apples from the tree?)

After hearing that Zoya is supposed to tutor her little protégé, Lilia lasts all of a day without butting in and promptly congratulates herself at sundown on her self-control. Through sheer force of will, she manages to rein in her impulses until school lets out the following day.

Then, Lilia makes three calls. Two share the same brusque manner – something in-between cordial invitation to dinner and absolute order, the unspoken _or else_ hanging in the air.

(Up until then, Zoya and Yuri hadn't understood why people carried out her wishes so resignedly, dignity snuffed out as easily as the flame of a candle. Now they know it is because the poor, poor victims cannot edge a word between _Zdravstvujtye_ and _Do svidaniya.)_

The other call, Lilia isn't sure she wants to make. She stares at her home screen for a good fifteen minutes before she sets her jaw and finally presses Yakov's number.

(Unbeknownst to her, Yakov too is uncertain whether to pick up the phone or ignore it entirely. But – he does, of course he does, because he is Yakov and she is Lilia, and apart they are more than they ever were together, and isn't that the saddest thing?)

"Make sure to keep that Nikiforov busy tonight and come have dinner at mine." Lilia licks lips that are suddenly too dry.

Yakov sputters, at first, though he does wonder why her calls keep surprising him. "Why?"

"To gently push Yuri towards his academic pursuits, of course." She says this so naturally, like they don't have any other reason to acknowledge each other beyond Yuri and his talent.

"While you do what?"

"While I do the same to Zoya. Well?" She mimics petulance, reclining in her chair like a bored, disdainful queen.

Yakov is prepared to refuse – only images of Yuri annoying him pop up like the advertisements he doesn't know how to close on the internet, and – and it would be only natural for him to take an interest in Yuri's schooling, and who knows, maybe even his social life needs a little bit of checking up. Teenagers need guidance, he's been often told.

His lips pull into a wolfish grin. (Katsuki Yuuri, who happens upon him exactly at this moment, gulps and backtracks immediately after spying the glint in his eyes.)

"I'll be there."

He ends the call before Lilia can, counting it as a victory.

(Back in her office, Lilia chuckles darkly. "Old coot." She calls him, staring at nothing in particular. )

* * *

Lilia timed her little capricious gathering so that it caught Zoya after a particularly gruesome shift and Yuri after a grueling session of training. As it happens, they are too weary and tired to put up any sort of fight, and the prospect of home cooked food is far too enticing to pass up.

(Even Yuri has to admit that her pirozhki taste almost _– almost_ as good as his grandfather's; and from him, there is no higher praise.)

The two teenagers meet under a sky of dying light in front of Lilia's house, the harsh wind biting at their cheeks and fingertips.

"What the hell does the hag want?" Hisses Yuri as he holds open Lilia's front door for Zoya.

"How should I know?" Zoya snipes back, nose crinkled in annoyance – at herself, for being so atrociously weak-willed, at Yuri, for asking questions to which she doesn't know the answer, at Lilia, for interfering yet again with her life, at the Universe itself, because it always seems to trip her up.

"I'm not a mind reader." She mumbles as she crosses the threshold, muscles locked in agitation under her light coat.

"And ain't that the truth." Yuri murmurs bitterly as he follows suit, stealing only a moment to gaze back at the night sky.

(It is a rich blue lined with silver clouds and never ending, and the empty vastness of it calls to his very soul. When he eventually enters his strict teacher's home, he does so with a heavy heart and the mournful certainty that no pleasant surprise lies in wait.)

They peel off their shoes dutifully, throwing backpacks brimming with books and useless knowledge unceremoniously onto the floor. It is almost second nature for Zoya - she's had numerous backpacks over the years, but somehow, they all ended up spilling their contents across Lilia's Persian rug.

She wonders briefly how many times Yuri had to have visited, to be so at ease in a house so dominated by the ballerina's personality, and suppresses a pang of – of _something_ , as she hangs back and watches him head towards the dining room.

Zoya scans the furniture, the walls, the artwork, cataloguing everything with quick glances, and her heart stops inside her chest, because – nothing has changed; the color scheme, the leather couch with the fluffy pillows, the rickety old chair, the glass table, even the paintings, for God's sake, they're all the same as when she was young and misty-eyed and had a mother and a father and an aunt who clearly doesn't care anymore, because – because – nothing has changed, except the pictures.

They are no more photos of the Romanovs – not the one from her christening, all swaddled up in blankets in Lilia's arms on the cathedral's steps, not the one where they're all grinning side by side, Lilia and Zoya and her mother, not the one from her first piano recital when Lilia had painstakingly woven diamond clips into her braids, _not a one_.

Instead, Lilia's butter-and-honey walls are adorned with abstracts drawings done in ink and Russian landscapes in full winter, the overpriced kind tourists buy from gift shops, and there, to add insult to injury, crowning them all, just above the fireplace sits a photo of a glazed Yuri, squished in between a teary eyed Lilia and an overjoyed Yakov, a gold metal glinting on his chest.

(Jealousy slides into sorrow slides into pain and binds her insides into an awful mess and - )

"You coming or what?" Yuri twists around to see her, pale hair swishing gently with the movement of his head.

Zoya startles, ripped from her agonizing musings, but manages to paste a half smile onto her face.

"Right behind you."

(She doesn't look back, but she doesn't need to – she cannot _un_ -see it, cannot help that those Cheshire grins are burned against the inside of her eyelids, detail after soul shriveling detail – or maybe that's the tears, burning hollowly in her eyes.)

* * *

While Yuri is all curved lines and feline grace as he slips into his chair, Zoya plunks herself down next to him with a loud _thud_ , disregarding the rude screech of the legs on the hardwood floor.

The blond peers at her curiously, but he can't catch her eyes – Zoya is keeping her head bowed, raven hair spilling around her cheeks to create a flimsy curtain. Her hands she keeps in her lap, clenched one above the other until the white of the bone shows through her pale skin.

Yuri shrugs to himself – he too is not above such petulant acts, but he is famished enough to keep his annoyance under wraps. Besides, his training for the day is done and all he has left to do is homework, but he is loath to start it. (What are lunch breaks for, anyway?)

The silence is jarring as Lilia pours them ladleful after ladleful of solyanka soup, careful to avoid the chopped carrots when she reaches Yakov's bowl. Yuri savagely attacks his portion as Lilia takes the tureen back to the kitchen. Zoya does the same, albeit after a short hesitation. Yakov glares disapprovingly and ostensibly moves his spoon further away from his bowl.

"Zoya, do you have a boyfriend?" He asks instead, nonchalantly sipping at his water.

The effect is instantaneous, though perhaps not what he had in mind: Yuri's utensil stops midway to his lips, his gleaming eyes of blue-and-green shifting with interest from Yakov to Zoya to Yakov, Lilia halts halfway out the door, back tense like a bloodhound poised to run, and Zoya chokes on her mouthful of soup.

She bites her tongue by mistake, leaning in her chair to grip at the table. Great coughs rack her whole body, half-chewed pieces of cabbage and bell paper flying out of her mouth to hit Yakov squarely in the face.

Yuri breaks out of his trance to cackle manically, thumping Zoya enthusiastically on her back. The young skater even pushes his glass of sparkly water in her direction, but Zoya's eyes are scrunched closed and her helplessly flailing hand sends it hurling towards Yakov.

Yakov sees everything in slow motion, his failing eyes sharpening on the crystal cup as it spins and spins like a fragile rocket towards him, the water rising like a ferocious tidal wave. The morose man's eyes bulge out of his head in panic as the spray of liquid catches him in the face. He gives a sharp yelp at the sting and pushes back in his chair, banging his knees on the underside of the table – only he pushes too fast, too hard, and Yakov finds himself gripping thin air as he falls backwards, chair and all.

His body smacks the floor with a resounding _clonk_ , and it frightens Lilia into almost dropping the porcelain tureen.

"Yakov?!" She exclaims, shrilly as a hummingbird.

Yuri is in hysterics, tears of laughter gathering at the corners of his eyes, but he bottles his mirth up enough to prod the now motionless man with his foot.

A low grunt and an emphatic "Fuck!" is his only answer.

"He's fine." Yuri whizzes out to a horrified Zoya when he thinks he can open his mouth without bursting into snickers.

Lilia hurriedly places the soup bowl on the edge of the counter closest to her before dropping to her knees beside Yakov. Zoya, too, scrambles under the table, her expression stricken.

"Yakov?" Asks Lilia rather coldly (because the colder she sounds, the more she feels, remembers Zoya with a bittersweet pang), placing a wrinkled hand on the top of his head.

"Gently, woman, gently!" He screams hoarsely, bringing his own hands over hers, trapping it there.

"Zoya, go show Yuri the piano." Lilia half-shouts to be heard over the aforementioned boy's howls.

"But I… I haven't started yet on his piece." Her hands move restlessly above Yakov's moaning body, willing to help but not knowing how.

"Then go do your homework" Lilia spits out through gritted teeth "but for God's sake, don't dawdle here."

The strained words sound like magic to Yuri's ear, because he jumps out of his chair and circles Zoya's thin wrist with his pale fingers, pulls her to her feet and drags her towards his lair.

"That was even better than seeing Katsudon choke on borscht in public, so thank you for that." Yuri snickers softly and mimics wiping a tear as he leans on the back of his closed door.

"It wasn't funny!" Zoya insists over her shoulder, peering out the window at the crescent moon, pinned between clouds and shrouded in mist.

"Of course not." He indulges her for a short, glorious moment, though sarcasm does coat his words in a thin layer. "It was epic!"

"It wasn't." She means for her tone to be rebuking, but her traitorous lips keep twitching upwards, guilty laughter bubbling like champagne in her throat.

She angles her head downwards, so that wayward curls may obstruct Yuri's vision, but she thinks he sees the quick flash of a smile, just for a second, because he grins back at her and – it is unexpected, this sense of companionship brought together by complicity, though not altogether unwelcome.

"Whatever." Zoya pushes her hair back behind her ears, presses her hands to the glass so that she feels the cold seeping in her finger bones. "But now we're evicted from the kitchen, and I'm _hungry_."

"Have no fear, simpleton, for Yuri the Great is here."

Zoya snorts, half-disdainful, amused despite herself, her blue-as-blue eyes following him as he squats beside the grandiose bed, arms disappearing wholly under its hidden depths. His tongue pokes out in concentration, pale face squished on the bed's wooden frame as he searches blindly under the bed. A second more and satisfaction curls his mouth as he emerges victorious, holding a cat in his right hand, a bag of paprika chips in his left.

Zoya's eyes light up like antique torches.

"You have a cat?" She smiles a giddy, little smile, approaching Yuri slowly.

"Yes." He answers with narrowed eyes, suspiciousness settling on his face like dust. "But he isn't for eating."

"No shit, Sherlock." She answers, but there isn't much vitriol in it, as Zoya is entirely too engrossed in watching the cat simply _be_.

"May I pet him?" She asks perfunctorily, hand already reaching to rub between the feline's smooth ears.

"That's… not such a good idea." Yuri tries to put distance between them, holding Potya to his chest and using the bag of chips as a charm to ward her off.

"Why not?" Her mouth slants into a little pout, her knees creating little ridges in the carpet as they rest between Yuri's own – she, leaning forward, him, edging backwards. "I'm pretty good with animals, you know."

"Yeah, well, I expect Potya has better taste." He shakes the bag of chips like the nice, shiny distraction it is. "Chips?"

"Sure." Zoya mumbles with a little shrug, though her expression remains decidedly mutinous. "I don't know about good taste, though – he has you for an owner, doesn't he?"

"I'll have you know Potya adores me, thank you very much." Yuri abandons the bag of questionably grown potatoes, now cuddling the squirming cat with both arms, cheek pressed to his fluffy belly. "Don't you, Potya?"

He nuzzles Potya under his jaw, the cat purring contentedly under Zoya's envious frown. She sighs resignedly and plops her butt down, curling her legs around her in as ladylike a manner as she can manage.

Zoya tries to ignore Yuri's impromptu cuddle-fest, taking the time to survey the room as she surreptitiously snags the chips. It is simple but very cluttered, clearly regularly lived in, a certain warmness clinging to the surface of every object in sight. The walls are painted a modern dove grey, but the comforter is black, the pillows darker, and clothes are strewn everywhere but in the closet: on the floor, hanging off the edge of an open drawer, on the bed, under a desk cluttered with books and pens and medals.

Not Lilia's style – at all.

"Is this your room?" Zoya questions idly, licking paprika and salt off her fingertips as she pretends memories don't chip away savagely at her heart. "It looks like a pigsty."

"You should feel right at home, then." Yuri drawls lazily from the corner of his mouth, Potya having curled like a precious, furry, little pretzel around his neck and shoulders.

Zoya's eyes flash dangerously, but her response, when it comes, is bland.

"Nah, I'm more of a Ritz kind-of-girl." Her fingers dig into her thighs as she passes Yuri the whole bag of chips, appetite suddenly gone.

"So – you live here?"

(Her tone is as easy as her heart is not.)

Yuri shifts uncomfortably, and Zoya's eyes narrow in on the gesture, scenarios running through her head like drunken bumblebees.

"Kind of." He answers eventually, mouth twisted strangely to the side. "Sometimes I crash at Yakov's, or at Viktor's or - ." He cuts off abruptly, like he's said more than he meant to. "What about – "

She hums noncommittally and, reading the question in his eyes, does the one thing she is sure will discomfit him. Zoya leans forward, fast like lightning, and swipes a finger underneath Yuri's cheek.

(So soft, she marvels, for someone so hard around the edges.)

His eyes snap open, pools of drowning darkness, as he coils a hand around her fragile wrist. Her bones are so little, so bird-like, that his thumb overlaps his littlest digit – it feels like sandpaper, brittle and fine, and he wonders how much pressure can so slight a bone withstand before it breaks.

(Never has he been more aware of the strength in his fingers, the weight of his palm.)

"Huh?" He asks, eloquent as on the day he was born.

He has no time to gather his bearings, because Zoya retreats to her little spot on the carpet just as fast as she'd invaded his personal bubble, an amused smile fluttering on her lips.

"An eyelash, silly." She shakes her wrist, still clasped in his. "Make a wish."

Zoya expects him to be shy – with swear words instead of rosy cheeks, but still – or maybe even surprised into stillness, but – but she is not ready for him to bring her hand to his face, oh-so-careful-and-slow, for his breath to tickle the sensitive skin.

He studies her fingertips, the blue-and-green tapestry of her veins, winding together underneath pale skin, but – "I don't see it."

"That's because it's blond. Idiot." Zoya sighs resignedly, lying through her teeth.

"Girls never could keep their hands off of me." He says like he _sympathizes_ , nodding oh-so-considerately as he pets her on the cheek.

She jerks back, yanking her hand from between his' to clasp it at her breast.

"Arrogant ass." Her lips are pursed to minimize the chance of them curling into a smirk.

"What was that?" Yuri asks disinterestedly, stuffing his mouth full of chips.

"The truth." Zoya gets to her feet in one feline, fluid motion, brushing nonexistent lint from her jeans. "Bathroom pass." She amends at his not impressed look, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops for lack of anything else to do.

"It's the last on the left." Yuri shooes her away with a fluttering hand, his fluffy cat commanding his attention once more.

(He thinks she might have answered with a wry "I know." But he cannot be too sure – the matter is already half-forgotten, brushed aside by plaintive mewls and a playfully twitching tail.)

* * *

"Why are we here, again?" Mumbles Georgi around his straw, daintly swirling the pastel pink drink in his glass.

(Judging by the amount of fruit-scented alcohol he is inhaling, though, Yuuri concludes he isn't too put out.)

"We so rarely spend time together as a team that I wanted to show you all how much I appreciate and value your presence in my life!" Viktor says grandly, arms sweeping to encompass the dozen or so people gathered at the table.

Mila, balancing on the hind legs of her chair, snorts into her drink – clear and strong and authentic _vodka_ , thank you very much.

"Really?" Asks Pyotr, who is young and impressionable and thinks that Viktor hung the moon, centuries ago – at the beginning of his shining career.

"Yes, yes, of course!" Viktor nods enthusiastically, drumming his fingers on his knee, where the tablecloth hides the tell-tale motion. "Would I lie to you?"

His smile is beguiling, infused with magic and charisma – in the sense that it settles around his companions like an invisible blanket, twining through bone and sinew until it reaches hearts, warming them from within –

"Yes." Says Katya, who has known Viktor for far too long, and become accustomed to his antics – the good _and_ the bad.

"Well now, there's no need to be so callous – "

"Oh?" Mila leans in over the table, miming interest. "Then where's Yuri?" She makes a show of scanning the room, sweeping her baby blues left and right, right and left.

"He is a minor and I cannot in good conscience allow him – "

"Face it." She smirks, downing the glass in one experienced gulp. "You felt left out because Lilia asked Yuri and Yakov for dinner while conveniently forgetting about your existence."

Viktor, caught wrong-footed, widens his eyes in outrage and proceeds to defend his honour.

"Why, do you actually consider me to be so – so – so _childish_?" He enunciates the word slowly, drawing out the vowels in what he hopes passes for disdain.

It only takes the deadpanning of a resounding "Yes." in a harmonious chorus for the entire table to erupt into incredulous giggles and merry chatter, alcohol-induced or otherwise.

(Yuuri, for his part, forces out a few awkward chuckles – but while they all are _friendly,_ they are not his friends – they're Viktor's, and slipping up and speaking Russian besides.)

Yuuri knows he is not the most fun person to be around, nor the most confident, and he also appreciates the amount of effort they put into knowing him and learning his culture – nights of spilled sake and undercooked ramen, sun-drenched days of _gagaku_ music and Duolingo lessons – but he cannot help being overwhelmed, at times.

Even now, Viktor lounges in his chair and starts arguments, lips twitching upwards at odd intervals. His hand, beautifully sculpted in marble, still rests along the back of Yuuri's chair – but he's been speaking in Russian for the last ten minutes, and never noticed the subdued disposition of his lover.

(It's not entirely his fault, Yuuri acknowledges – he could be more vocal in his discomfort, more open in his struggles, but – but it is still Viktor's birthright; he would rather drown in his own sorrows than suggest Viktor change who he is.)

He shifts in his chair, glasses sliding down his nose and, conjuring up every bit of courage he possesses, Yuuri takes Viktor's hand – the one resting, until now, in his lap – and folds it on the silk tablecloth, gently, so gently twining their fingers.

Viktor, careful not to show his surprise – he is the one who enjoys dabbing in PDA now and then, not Yuuri, never him – squeezes back, using his thumb to massage Yuuri's knuckles.

Yuuri, lulled into contentedness, startles awake as if from a dream when, only minutes later, Viktor sits up and whispers about going to the bathroom.

While the silver-haired man is gone, Mila and Katya gently draw him out of his shell, pulling him into a whimsical conversation about traveling and love and stars, using words as much as hand gestures and facial expressions.

(As Yuuri's soul stops spiraling down towards hidden, inner depths of dejection, he dares think that maybe, maybe he could belong here, amidst a foreign country and borrowed friends, by Viktor's side; not now, not in the foreseeable future – but _someday_.)

* * *

"Excuse me, Mister?"

Viktor, on his way to the bathroom, angles his head towards the young, female employee, polite smile plastered on his face like a permanent theatre mask – never to be taken off.

"Yes?" He is already reaching for his fountain pen, which he keeps in his breast pocket for these situations exactly.

"You are aware, I hope, that we do not condone untoward behavior in this establishment."

Viktor's hand freezes halfway to his jacket, alarm bells going off in his head at the steel in the woman's gaze.

"Excuse me?" He asks in an airy voice, playing the fool.

"If you and your… companion keep this up, I'm afraid we will have to ask you to quietly vacate the premises."

The woman's pert nose is wrinkled, her tone overly polite. Viktor's vision snags on the multitude of freckles dotting her skin, on the subtle flash of her golden cross under the restaurant's neon lights. His blood rushes to his head, leaving him hot then cold then hot in dizzying succession.

(Viktor has always been a quick thinker, gifted with a silver tongue – but never has he hated himself more than now.)

"Ah, that measly handclasp?" He shakes his head, smiles indulgently, plays his part to perfection. "That man is my cousin, you see, and he only recently lost his young wife to cancer. My friends and I, we are only trying to smooth his hurt and quicken his return to polite society. You understand, _nyet_?"

The staff member's face is bare of both paint and emotion for a second, two – then her lips relax into a relieved smile, her pale hand briefly touching the cross resting high on her chest.

"Of course, sir. I apologize for having troubled you, but such is our policy."

Viktor smiles and nods, says everything that bears saying; he is ever so grateful to the hours spent in front of cameras, cultivating a second persona into which he slips with the ease of a burglar.

With a final, formal bow of his head, he continues towards the bathroom, where he splashes ice-cold water on his face and stares at his lily-white reflection. He grips the edge of the sink until bone pushes against skin, watching tiny tendrils of water as they drip slowly down his face.

He thinks they make him look like a man broken, his mask finally peeling off.

(When Viktor returns to his table, all jovial smiles and twinkling eyes once again, he pretends not to see Yuuri's hand inching towards his', the hurt expression he hurries to cover with a painfully fake smile when his skin fails to slide against his'; his own breaking heart he buries under the sound of Georgi's laughter, of glasses tinkling in toast.)

* * *

The second he hears the soft _clink_ of the door closing behind Zoya – so very loud in the quiet room – Yuri springs up, dismissing the betrayed look his pet throws him as he ceases his loving, careful ministrations.

Forgoing any pretense of easy manner, Yuri swipes his hands through his hair as he hunts down all his textbooks. He curses himself for not thinking ahead, but – better late than never.

If only he could manage to gather them all, hide them in an untidy tower under his bed, surrender them with salt and incense – then maybe, _maybe_ he could avert the crisis on his hands.

He spies his Math book under a pair of dark jeans, bends to scoop it up and add it to his rapidly-growing pile. His Biology textbook he finds in the opposite corner, an empty can of soda functioning as an unconventional bookmark.

It's not that he isn't used to performing well under duress – he is, _he is_ – but that doesn't mean his heart isn't thumping wildly as his legs get tangled in the shirts and scarves he's used to carpet his room with, as he agitatedly scavenges for his History book.

He has a test tomorrow, and he knows only the basics – but if Zoya can't find any materials, then she can't make him study, can she?

 _Can she?_

Paranoia surges in Yuri's veins, makes him move faster, swifter. Once he is satisfied with his armful of school books, he looks for a hidey-hole – under the bed? No, too obvious; in a drawer? – Nah, God knows what lies in there; in the closet? No – just _no_.

The doorjamb rattles, a female voice getting drowned out by the loud buzzing in his head. Biting his lip in frustration, Yuri just manages to shove aside the heavy curtains, open the window and throw the offending objects out before he hears the door opening all the way.

Yuri plunges on the bed and tries for an unaffected pose, the hand behind him groping blindly for the laptop he keeps on the nightstand. Potya, jostled from his sleep, gives them both the evil eye, whiskers twitching in displeasure.

"Want to watch a movie?" He gasps out in the same breath, aquamarine eyes following the cat as he morosely jumps down from the bed, probably to curl underneath in peace.

"Only if I get to choose it."

Yuri freezes with his hand between the laptop's black lids, dread blooming in his stomach. He raises his eyes with apprehension, slow and steady, to meet those of a wryly smirking Lilia.

"Lilia" – he grimaces – "I – "

"Tell Zoya that Yakov will drive her home when he takes his leave, in an hour or so. Also" she adds with a teasing lilt "studying first, and wooing later."

Yuri, flustered, accidentally crushes his hand between the lids, so his voice comes out only as a dying hiss.

"I'm not wooing anybody, stay out of – "

"Whatever." Lilia says loudly over him and, on that mature note, slams the door closed.

Yuri, in turn, slams his head on the wooden headrest – and promptly regrets it, as a dull pain spreads from the base of his neck to his temples.

"Potya, why do all women have selective hearing?"

A prissy mewl from underneath the bed is his only answer, though Yuri interprets it as sympathetic. Sighing softly, he returns to munching on chips as he waits for the laptop to power up and for another female voice to disrupt his peace.

He needn't have worried – on his fifth mouthful, Zoya's head full of bouncy curls pokes in, the rest of her following after a short hesitation. There is, however, no reluctance clinging to her voice when she next speaks.

"You're going to make yourself as big as a hot-air balloon if you keep eating that shit, you know."

She circles around the bed, coming up to Yuri's empty side even as she keeps a healthy distance between them. Even though her eyes rest on the newly-opened window, she makes no remark on it, choosing instead to watch Yuri as he rapidly scrolls through feel-better videos of kittens.

"No, I'm not." He doesn't even bother taking his eyes from the screen. " _Besides_ ice-skating and regular training, I also run every morning at least half an hour."

Zoya struggles not to tense up as an idea – an incredulous, outrageous, probably very stupid _idea_ – springs up in her mind.

"Really? You have that much energy before school?" Zoya tries not to grimace, but she mustn't be as successful as she thinks, because Yuri snorts, throwing her a vaguely amused look.

(The first, it strikes her, that is coated in neither hostility nor anger.)

"Wouldn't have pegged you as a lazyass."

"I'm not lazy." She corrects primly "Merely adverse to sweat and soreness."

Yuri smirks slyly, eyes catching her own. "Does that mean you're also averse to the horizontal sport?"

Zoya tries to remain unaffected, she really does, but she can feel the heat creeping up her neck even as her expression remains stoic.

"You're crass." She mutters crossly.

Yuri raises one blonde eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed.

(Zoya doesn't blame him – as comebacks go, it's pretty weak, but really, there is no correct answer to _that._ )

"Prude." Yuri's lips curl up at the corners, his face as starkly pale as Zoya's is not.

Affronted, Zoya gets to her knees and throws him a look so scathing, the blond should have spontaneously combusted like the old witches of Salem.

"What did you call me?"

Yuri, too, sits up, a sudden zing of excitement thrumming in his blood – were he a cat, his ears would be twitching uncontrollably, his fur staying up at the end.

"Prude." He repeats, even more vehemently than before.

A displeased narrowing of eyes is Yuri's only warning as Zoya throws herself at him with an inarticulate war-cry. She juts a leg in between his own, trying as best she can to immobilize him – then proceeds to tickle Yuri with startling ferociousness.

She is an expert torturer, her nimble hands playing over his ribs like they're piano keys, the thin material of his shirt doing little to absorb the impact of Zoya's single-minded focus. Yuri, caught unawares, howls in unintended laughter, breathless guffaws rolling off his tongue like water running over river rocks.

"Who's the prude _now?_ " Gasps Zoya out, hands like little tornados everywhere at once on Yuri's torso.

The aforementioned boy is short of breath, muscles quivering uncontrollably. He rolls around like a paddle, unceremoniously disturbing the sheets, as he tries in vain to get away from Zoya's skilled fingers.

"Mercy! Mercy!" He cries, little tears of laughter sparkling brightly in the corners of his eyes.

"Not a chance." Zoya snorts, her vengeful streak miles wide.

Her arms are starting to hurt so, in a moment of inattention, she lessens the pressure on his leg. It's the opening Yuri's been waiting for – and suddenly she's pinned to the wrinkled covers, hair spread around her like a storm cloud as Yuri holds her wrists prisoner in one hand, the other inflicting the same childish punishment on her as she had on him only minutes before.

Zoya squeals loudly and tries to squirm away, only he is so much stronger than her that she can barely move an inch.

"How do you like it now?" Wickedness sharpens his grin, brightens his gaze.

"Stoooop!" She hoots, sides heaving in exhaustion, even though she strongly suspects Yuri has no interest in honoring her request.

"You – little – hypocrite!" Yuri punctuates each word with a savage tickle, feeling very much avenged – up until Zoya somehow wedges her elbow in his throat, knocking the breath well out of him.

Choking, Yuri stills his attack – and only realizes his exact whereabouts when his bout of coughing subsides.

He's straddling Zoya's legs, practically lounging on top of her. Their faces are so close together that his hair falls in her face, caressing her forehead, her cheeks, her _lips_.

Zoya seems to understand their predicament at the same time, her cobalt blue eyes getting rounder and rounder with each passing second. Yuri fumbles for something to say, _anything_ , and the mighty intellectual comment he comes up with is –

"I win." He squeezes Zoya's wrists – still in his loose grasp above her head – in case she gets any ideas of voicing the opposite.

"Yeah, yeah." She rolls her eyes and pretends not to see Yuri's smirk widen as she –begrudgingly, mind you- cedes the victory.

In retaliation, she pushes Yuri off of her with perhaps too much force, if the _oof_ he makes is any indication.

"So, are we watching something or not?" Zoya tilts her chin towards the laptop, the last remnants of a blush painting the apples of her cheeks.

Yuri settles besides her, so close their clothed shoulders are a hairs-breadth from touching (so close they can almost hear the other's heartbeat), and positions the laptop on his tummy.

"Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

In the darkness of his bedroom in Almaty, Otabek sits alone, veiled in silence and the city's pretty lights.

Usually, he relishes the quiet – some days, the rapid fire succession of training – school – training – homework – more training gets too much, makes his head buzz, and it is only in these moments that he finds himself.

Not so now.

Tonight, he feels lonely – weighted down by the expectations of both himself and others. He's fallen thirteen times in training today (he doesn't have to count the aches to know, each of them left a bruise on his pride), and though his body hurts, his heart wails even more.

(Luckily, there's no one to hear – or so he tells himself.)

Otabek wants for someone to break the cocoon of silence that suffocates him, longs to hear a human voice – maybe then the cracks in his heart will fill with something else other than smoke and dust.

He tells himself there is no way he can contact anyone in his home country – the hour is too late, the city already shrouded in moonlight and the people in dreams. His parents are busy workers, and his friends are mostly athletes – even if they wouldn't mind assuaging Otabek's late night worries, they still need all the rest they can get.

It is only after this lengthy train of thought that Otabek works up the courage to video-call the only insomniac he knows of.

( _Liar, liar, liar_ – he wanted Yuri's kitten-scowl from the start, only…)

The first two calls go unanswered, and he is reluctant to start up a third. Maybe his neglected tiredness finally caught up with Yuri and forced him to bed.

 _Third time's the charm_ , Otabek mutters, hopelessly hopeful, and presses _Call_ again.

This time, the screen lights up – and he finds himself face to face with Potya's whiskers and mutinous expression.

Otabek is both confused and delighted – the cat never seemed to like anyone but her young master – but he still admires the feline grace he tries to emulate in his skating every day.

"Hi, Potya." He gives a small, dorkish wave, but Potya merely pulls back her lips to show sharp, tiny rows of teeth. Then she slinks away from the camera, tail swishing as disdainfully as a queen's long cape.

Otabek, used to Potya's antics, is already feeling better, his morale raised by just this tiny piece of familiarity.

He is just metaphorically petting himself on the back for calling when the screen clears of Potya's fluffy backside, and his heart turns to heavy stone in the cage of his ribs.

At first, he is confused. He doesn't understand what he is seeing; the whole screen is a tangle of limbs and sheets - but slowly, slowly, the image begins to make sense – and there it is, Yuri's forearm, white and subtly muscled from all the work in the studio, caught in the vices of contrasting midnight hair, and his leg, too – thrown over another, smaller, definitely _female_ leg.

The picture they're painting is oddly innocent –ethereal, almost, like the golden-threaded icons he's seen in Christian cathedrals all over the world.

Yuri and a girl are curled towards each other, palms almost touching but not quite, heads close together as they sleep as peacefully as angels, chests raising and falling in tandem.

There is nothing untoward happening, no red strings to irrevocably tie their hearts together. Otabek tells himself there is no need for suspicion to arise in his chest like a volcano, but he knows he is only grasping at straws – because there is a girl in his best friend's bed, nestled in his sheets and covered in his scent.

Otabek knew this would happen someday – but then why does it hurt so much?

(Why is it that _betrayal_ is the first word that springs to his mind?)

* * *

Something is tickling Yuri's nose.

Lazily, he paws at the offending object, but the sensation only intensifies. Disgruntled, he forcibly peels opens his eyelids – and comes face to face with a most unexpected sight. He sees the world through wisps of silky black, and that world consists of only Zoya's sweetly sleeping face.

Her eyelashes – short and thick, like a doll's – rest against the roundness of her cheeks, hiding from view dark circles as pronounced as bruises. Her rosebud mouth is lax, lush even in unconsciousness, lips parted like she's waiting for true love's kiss.

It's her hair, Yuri dimly realizes, her midnight mess of hair, spread around her like an unholy halo, that twists and curls, obscuring his vision. Silky in texture, the long strand wrap around him like little malevolent tentacles – in his sleep-softened mind, the hazy thought draws out a chuckle.

Yuri is just marveling at the strangeness of seeing her so still – up until now, he never realized how little space she took, her personality too big to be contained in so small and delicate a frame – when she _moves_ , reaches closer to the only heating source available.

Yuri's breathing stutters in surprise, stops dead as Zoya ducks her head under his chin, nuzzling closer to his warmth. Her hands are cold as icicles, and she fists them in Yuri's shirt.

His first instinct is to back away – he's not the sort of person to enjoy cuddles nor find comfort in lingering touches – but then as minutes pass unbidden, he finds her presence oddly pleasant. It's weird, but – Yuri doesn't remember the last time someone held him so casually, with such blatant disregard to his own fame (as if hugs are something to be given freely, and not won like a prize).

His arm seems to have a mind of its own, shifting from his side to curl just below Zoya's shoulder in a loose embrace. Other than that, he moves no muscle – even his breathing is slow, almost shy, like he's afraid of waking her up.

Yuri decides the notion is absurd in the same chain of thought – if Zoya is asleep enough to cuddle with her archenemy, then she can damn well sleep with the music of his heartbeat in her ears.

There is a curious sensation in his chest that keeps him awake – not happiness or excitement, not even tranquility, but something else he cannot identify. Yuri is just debating naming it after himself when he descends into sleep, thoughts of the like scattering like dust in the wind.

(Someone older, more experienced, could have told Yuri that what he felt was contentedness – because while it was Zoya's hands that were cold, in the end, it's Yuri's heart that warms).

 **.**

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* * *

 **Also, I want it noted that I in no way, shape or form tolerate homophobia; but the incident I imagined in this chapter is commonplace in most Christian countries, Russia included, my homecountry included. I only thought it would be interesting to explore this side of the story, the one closer to reality, but that doesn't mean I share the same points of view with the characters I write.**


End file.
